Author Topic: System problems upon Ram upgrade (Read 386 times)

SteveBailey · « **on:** October 18, 2007, 07:57:10 PM »

Ok, I have 4 dimms slots, 1 &3 are full and working fine w/ 1 gig sticks.

I try to fill slots 2 & 4 w/ the same, identical in every way stick to make it 4 gigs and I get the following message on boot up:

missing or corrupt file windows\system23\config\system

then the system will not boot... sometimeas giving me a blue screen of death. It will boot, doing some self-repair to registry, only after I remove the new sticks.

According to my manual, my board will support 4 gigs. its a: ASUS P5n32-SLI Premium.

I have XP Pro w/ SP2 as my OS.

Some questions: do i need 64 bit XP as my OS to handle 4 gigs?
How do I tell if I have 32 or 64 bit?

I am willing to update my bios and I DL'd the latest version but do not know how to upgrade/flash it. I simply downloaded a file. It's not self extracting or a .exe file.

Ideas?

Thanks!

Steve

Maverick · « **Reply #1 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:06:17 PM »

Will your machine run on just on of the sticks? If so then put one at a time in and try to boot up. It may be that you have a bad stick of ram there. If it will only run with 2 in then find 2 that run and switch one at a time in one of the slots.

eagl · « **Reply #2 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:19:39 PM »

Go into bios and make sure the memory command rate setting to 2T instead of 1T. You'll lose a small bit of speed but many mobos won't work at 1T with 4 sticks of memory installed.

An article discussing the performance hit going from 1T to 2T:
http://www.overclock.net/amd-memory/32605-1t-vs-2t-command-rate-there.html

Basically you can lose up to 25% in certain synthetic benchmarks, but only 2-3% in actual benchmarks even in memory-intensive tasks.

A bios update might help, but try manually setting the command rate first. If you think you still need the bios update, read the instructions on the bios update page very carefully. If you still don't understand how to do it, don't even try because you can kill your motherboard if you do it wrong.

SteveBailey · « **Reply #3 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:21:40 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Maverick
Will your machine run on just on of the sticks? If so then put one at a time in and try to boot up. It may be that you have a bad stick of ram there. If it will only run with 2 in then find 2 that run and switch one at a time in one of the slots.

good idea Mav, I have done that and verified that all sticks are good.

ASUS has this catch all answer: The memory controller which supports memory swap functionality is used. The latest chipsets like Intel 975X, 955X, Nvidia NF4 SLI Intel Edition, Nvidia NF4 SLI X16, and AMD K8 CPU architecture can support the memory swap function.
2. Windows XP Pro X64 Ed. (64-bit) or other OS which can address more than 4GB memory.

can you translate this for me? Dioes it make sense, considering my problem?

SteveBailey · « **Reply #4 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:23:02 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by eagl
Go into bios and make sure the memory command rate setting to 2T instead of 1T. You'll lose a small bit of speed but many mobos won't work at 1T with 4 sticks of memory installed.

An article discussing the performance hit going from 1T to 2T:
http://www.overclock.net/amd-memory/32605-1t-vs-2t-command-rate-there.html

Basically you can lose up to 25% in certain synthetic benchmarks, but only 2-3% in actual benchmarks even in memory-intensive tasks.

should I update the bios while I'm at it? How do I update it? I've downloaded the new bios but have no idea how to flash it.

SteveBailey · « **Reply #5 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:24:43 PM »

FYI my cpu is an Intel Core 2

eagl · « **Reply #6 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:25:12 PM »

Check the mobo support website where you (should have) got the bios update file. There should be detailed instructions, and possibly another bios update utility that you run from a command prompt (usually from a boot floppy).

If you can't figure it out, don't guess, because a bios update mistake can kill your motherboard dead.

SteveBailey · « **Reply #7 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:27:22 PM »

another FYI my system is 32 bit

SteveBailey · « **Reply #8 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:27:58 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by eagl
Check the mobo support website where you (should have) got the bios update file. There should be detailed instructions, and possibly another bios update utility that you run from a command prompt (usually from a boot floppy).

If you can't figure it out, don't guess, because a bios update mistake can kill your motherboard dead.

Yes, I have the file, just no way to update it.... rechecking asus for utility.

eagl · « **Reply #9 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:29:50 PM »

Regarding special mobo or windows settings, you shouldn't need to do anything to install 4 gig. You won't actually be able to USE all 4 gig since some of the address space used for devices like the video card are mapped under the 4 gig line, essentially reducing the amount of system memory by the amount of memory reserved by the device. Every single device in your computer uses that memory, and it's all mapped under the 4 gig line.

As an example, if you have a vid card with 512 meg vid memory, you can expect to lose 512 meg of usable system memory.

This is a general rule with generic windows installations. There are ways to limit how bad this issue affects you with various different operating systems, but it's not worth it unless you KNOW you are memory limited. I think the 64 bit versions of windows don't have this problem as bad, but poor 64 bit drivers make 64 bit windows generally slower than 32 bit windows so any memory you gain is pretty much offset by the slower overall system speed and poor drivers.

SteveBailey · « **Reply #10 on:** October 18, 2007, 08:42:32 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by eagl
Regarding special mobo or windows settings, you shouldn't need to do anything to install 4 gig. You won't actually be able to USE all 4 gig since some of the address space used for devices like the video card are mapped under the 4 gig line, essentially reducing the amount of system memory by the amount of memory reserved by the device. Every single device in your computer uses that memory, and it's all mapped under the 4 gig line.

As an example, if you have a vid card with 512 meg vid memory, you can expect to lose 512 meg of usable system memory.

.

I have a 1 gig video card.... should I not bother w/ the extra sticks, based on your last post?

eagl · « **Reply #11 on:** October 18, 2007, 09:12:27 PM »

Interesting.

You might try adding 1 stick and seeing if it'll boot with just 3...

SteveBailey · « **Reply #12 on:** October 18, 2007, 09:28:50 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by eagl
Interesting.

You might try adding 1 stick and seeing if it'll boot with just 3...

Would this delete hyperthreading?

eagl · « **Reply #13 on:** October 18, 2007, 09:44:17 PM »

Hyperthreading has nothing to do with memory as far as I know. You will probably lose dual channel access to the memory, but again that's only a smallish performance decrease.

You might want to keep working on getting all 4 sticks working. You'll end up with about 3 gig usable ram (probably) and it'll be in dual channel. I think if you go into your bios and force it to 2T command rate and otherwise use "auto" memory settings (sometimes called "by spd"), it may work.

SteveBailey · « **Reply #14 on:** October 18, 2007, 10:03:08 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by eagl
Hyperthreading has nothing to do with memory as far as I know. You will probably lose dual channel access to the memory, but again that's only a smallish performance decrease.

You might want to keep working on getting all 4 sticks working. You'll end up with about 3 gig usable ram (probably) and it'll be in dual channel. I think if you go into your bios and force it to 2T command rate and otherwise use "auto" memory settings (sometimes called "by spd"), it may work.

Where in bios is this?