Welcome to Vista Banter. You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions, articles and access our other FREE features. By joining our free community you will have access to ask questions and reply to others posts, upload your own photos and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today! If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact support. |
|
Hardware and Windows Vista Hardware issues in relation to Windows Vista. (microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices) |
|
LinkBack | Thread Tools | Display Modes |
|
|||
Memory Management
After suffering through the betas and then running a hacked copy of Vista
Ultimate x64 for most of the year, I was sufficiently satisfied that Vista was stable for my system that I bought my own (not cheap). The importance of this will become obvious later. My system is an Asus A8N32-SLI, Athlon 3800+, 4x512M Corsair, 3 SATA's striped RAID 5 Nvidia mode, Nvidia 7600 GT, two monitors of unequal resolution on each DVI, the principal in portrait and the accessory in landscape. BIOS settings are defaults excepting that the gameport is disabled as Vista doesn't support this. Nothing is currently on the Silicon Image ports. I long formatted the drive and installed Vista clean. During a reboot after the second or third visit to Windows Update, I repeatedly BSOD'd with memory_management and netio.sys errors, not being able to get past Safe mode. I cannot remember in what sequence the nforce and video drivers were updated but we learn to click on install and reboot until Update says it is happy. Someone suggested in a non Microsoft forum to remove the upper gig of RAM. Crazy but I gave it a shot and voila, it boots and runs well, albeit slowly. Not to be foiled by chance, I put back in the gig of memory and booted to the BSOD again. Memtest x 24h shows no problems. Device manager is happy. So my illegal copy of Vista ran well and my legal copy has some hiccoughs reminiscent of the betas. The only major difference I can think of is that with the illegal copy I always ran the latest Nvidia drivers from Nvidia's website as they came out and currently I'm using only the Windows update drivers. Unless someone has a suggestion here, my next step will be to install the Nvidia platform although I read in the forums that people had no problems until they did this. I hope this post is informative to someone troubleshooting or developing. -- Brad |
|
|||
Memory Management
I don't know whether you want these 3 cents but hey I will toss them out
anyways...On my system I am running Vista business on a Intel D975XBX2 motherboard running 4gigs of ddr800 Kingston HyperX..Now here is the kicker...When I first booted up it crashed consistently until I replaced the ram with 2 MATCHED pairs...After that the system has been screaming fast and stable as a rock for about 8 months...all software ,,apps and games are smooth as silk...My 3 Video cards (ATI crossfire's) are also extremely smooth....I also tried memtest with the original ram and nothing showed as a glitch but once swapped we are talkin butter.....Go figure !! Just my 3 cents...... Best of luck.............Drew "Brad" wrote in message ... After suffering through the betas and then running a hacked copy of Vista Ultimate x64 for most of the year, I was sufficiently satisfied that Vista was stable for my system that I bought my own (not cheap). The importance of this will become obvious later. My system is an Asus A8N32-SLI, Athlon 3800+, 4x512M Corsair, 3 SATA's striped RAID 5 Nvidia mode, Nvidia 7600 GT, two monitors of unequal resolution on each DVI, the principal in portrait and the accessory in landscape. BIOS settings are defaults excepting that the gameport is disabled as Vista doesn't support this. Nothing is currently on the Silicon Image ports. I long formatted the drive and installed Vista clean. During a reboot after the second or third visit to Windows Update, I repeatedly BSOD'd with memory_management and netio.sys errors, not being able to get past Safe mode. I cannot remember in what sequence the nforce and video drivers were updated but we learn to click on install and reboot until Update says it is happy. Someone suggested in a non Microsoft forum to remove the upper gig of RAM. Crazy but I gave it a shot and voila, it boots and runs well, albeit slowly. Not to be foiled by chance, I put back in the gig of memory and booted to the BSOD again. Memtest x 24h shows no problems. Device manager is happy. So my illegal copy of Vista ran well and my legal copy has some hiccoughs reminiscent of the betas. The only major difference I can think of is that with the illegal copy I always ran the latest Nvidia drivers from Nvidia's website as they came out and currently I'm using only the Windows update drivers. Unless someone has a suggestion here, my next step will be to install the Nvidia platform although I read in the forums that people had no problems until they did this. I hope this post is informative to someone troubleshooting or developing. -- Brad |
|
|||
Memory Management
I'm sure this well help someone. As for me, my matched pairs worked fine
until I reinstalled. It is an interesting point because I originally installed my illegal copy with one gig of RAM and then bought another gig of the same five months later (and had no problems). -- Brad "Drew" wrote: I don't know whether you want these 3 cents but hey I will toss them out anyways...On my system I am running Vista business on a Intel D975XBX2 motherboard running 4gigs of ddr800 Kingston HyperX..Now here is the kicker...When I first booted up it crashed consistently until I replaced the ram with 2 MATCHED pairs...After that the system has been screaming fast and stable as a rock for about 8 months...all software ,,apps and games are smooth as silk...My 3 Video cards (ATI crossfire's) are also extremely smooth....I also tried memtest with the original ram and nothing showed as a glitch but once swapped we are talkin butter.....Go figure !! Just my 3 cents...... Best of luck.............Drew "Brad" wrote in message ... After suffering through the betas and then running a hacked copy of Vista Ultimate x64 for most of the year, I was sufficiently satisfied that Vista was stable for my system that I bought my own (not cheap). The importance of this will become obvious later. My system is an Asus A8N32-SLI, Athlon 3800+, 4x512M Corsair, 3 SATA's striped RAID 5 Nvidia mode, Nvidia 7600 GT, two monitors of unequal resolution on each DVI, the principal in portrait and the accessory in landscape. BIOS settings are defaults excepting that the gameport is disabled as Vista doesn't support this. Nothing is currently on the Silicon Image ports. I long formatted the drive and installed Vista clean. During a reboot after the second or third visit to Windows Update, I repeatedly BSOD'd with memory_management and netio.sys errors, not being able to get past Safe mode. I cannot remember in what sequence the nforce and video drivers were updated but we learn to click on install and reboot until Update says it is happy. Someone suggested in a non Microsoft forum to remove the upper gig of RAM. Crazy but I gave it a shot and voila, it boots and runs well, albeit slowly. Not to be foiled by chance, I put back in the gig of memory and booted to the BSOD again. Memtest x 24h shows no problems. Device manager is happy. So my illegal copy of Vista ran well and my legal copy has some hiccoughs reminiscent of the betas. The only major difference I can think of is that with the illegal copy I always ran the latest Nvidia drivers from Nvidia's website as they came out and currently I'm using only the Windows update drivers. Unless someone has a suggestion here, my next step will be to install the Nvidia platform although I read in the forums that people had no problems until they did this. I hope this post is informative to someone troubleshooting or developing. -- Brad |
|
|||
Memory Management
All Corsair, same model #, size, and timings from the same vendor. I agree,
there could be subtle differences not reflected in the merchandising or what is reflected in the BIOS setup but I hate to sink another $150 into an already obsolete motherboard (DDR & Socket 939) if there is an obvious and easy fix that I've missed. -- Brad "f/fgeorge" wrote: On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:04:01 -0700, Brad wrote: I'm sure this well help someone. As for me, my matched pairs worked fine until I reinstalled. It is an interesting point because I originally installed my illegal copy with one gig of RAM and then bought another gig of the same five months later (and had no problems). But you have 4 pieces of memory, you can have a matched pair, but that is still only 2 pieces, again you have 4 pieces. There is probably a slight difference between the sets that is causing your issues, try buying one matched pair of 1 gig each peice and see if that fixes your problem. You could try and get a matched set of 4 pieces but that is extrememly hard to find and probalby very expensive. You said 5 months later from one set of 2 pieces to the other set of 2 pieces, that is not a matched set or 4. |
|
|||
Memory Management
In addition, the fly in the ointment is that Vista worked fine for four
months with this hardware until I reinstalled. Is it possible that the original RTM is different than the edition currently on shelves? -- Brad "f/fgeorge" wrote: On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:04:01 -0700, Brad wrote: I'm sure this well help someone. As for me, my matched pairs worked fine until I reinstalled. It is an interesting point because I originally installed my illegal copy with one gig of RAM and then bought another gig of the same five months later (and had no problems). But you have 4 pieces of memory, you can have a matched pair, but that is still only 2 pieces, again you have 4 pieces. There is probably a slight difference between the sets that is causing your issues, try buying one matched pair of 1 gig each peice and see if that fixes your problem. You could try and get a matched set of 4 pieces but that is extrememly hard to find and probalby very expensive. You said 5 months later from one set of 2 pieces to the other set of 2 pieces, that is not a matched set or 4. |
|
|||
Memory Management
Installing the nforce drivers made no difference but with all this talk
insisting on the RAM being matched, I put each pair into Bank 0 and looked at the timings in the BIOS. You are right, there was a subtle difference in the default timing for each pair. By overriding the automatic settings and relaxing Trcd out a notch, I was able to boot with both pairs in and still able to keep CL at 2 at a command rate of 1T. The hard fault rate in the Reliability Monitor appeared subjectively the same. I installed Bioshock as a real world test and got through a level without any crashes. Thanks -- Brad "Drew" wrote: I don't know whether you want these 3 cents but hey I will toss them out anyways...On my system I am running Vista business on a Intel D975XBX2 motherboard running 4gigs of ddr800 Kingston HyperX..Now here is the kicker...When I first booted up it crashed consistently until I replaced the ram with 2 MATCHED pairs...After that the system has been screaming fast and stable as a rock for about 8 months...all software ,,apps and games are smooth as silk...My 3 Video cards (ATI crossfire's) are also extremely smooth....I also tried memtest with the original ram and nothing showed as a glitch but once swapped we are talkin butter.....Go figure !! Just my 3 cents...... Best of luck.............Drew "Brad" wrote in message ... After suffering through the betas and then running a hacked copy of Vista Ultimate x64 for most of the year, I was sufficiently satisfied that Vista was stable for my system that I bought my own (not cheap). The importance of this will become obvious later. My system is an Asus A8N32-SLI, Athlon 3800+, 4x512M Corsair, 3 SATA's striped RAID 5 Nvidia mode, Nvidia 7600 GT, two monitors of unequal resolution on each DVI, the principal in portrait and the accessory in landscape. BIOS settings are defaults excepting that the gameport is disabled as Vista doesn't support this. Nothing is currently on the Silicon Image ports. I long formatted the drive and installed Vista clean. During a reboot after the second or third visit to Windows Update, I repeatedly BSOD'd with memory_management and netio.sys errors, not being able to get past Safe mode. I cannot remember in what sequence the nforce and video drivers were updated but we learn to click on install and reboot until Update says it is happy. Someone suggested in a non Microsoft forum to remove the upper gig of RAM. Crazy but I gave it a shot and voila, it boots and runs well, albeit slowly. Not to be foiled by chance, I put back in the gig of memory and booted to the BSOD again. Memtest x 24h shows no problems. Device manager is happy. So my illegal copy of Vista ran well and my legal copy has some hiccoughs reminiscent of the betas. The only major difference I can think of is that with the illegal copy I always ran the latest Nvidia drivers from Nvidia's website as they came out and currently I'm using only the Windows update drivers. Unless someone has a suggestion here, my next step will be to install the Nvidia platform although I read in the forums that people had no problems until they did this. I hope this post is informative to someone troubleshooting or developing. -- Brad |