I bought 3 512MB sticks of PC133 SD RAM for my D845HV motherboard, but I have a weird problem. I put all three sticks in my computer and the computer won't boot up XP without crashing. Each stick individually works fine but all three sticks at once for some reason crashes it. I currently have 2 of the 512 sticks installed and a 256 stick.

Does anyone know what's going on? Is it a RAM issue or a motherboard issue. I don't think it's XP.

the_guy

i seriously doubt its a windows issue. likely a motherboard issue. id look for an updated bios for starters then you could try updating drivers within the OS if you still have problems

The motherboard is at the latest BIOS revision. What drivers should I try to update. I believe they're at the latest version.

the_guy

its just a guess but i would try chipset drivers first (Intel, Via, etc) but your board may not support 3x512 have you checked to see if all 3 show in the bios (if your bios has an area that shows the memory) if you cant find it or cant see the memory count on boot, try changing bios otions such as Full screen logo, Splash Screen and/or quick boot to disabled then look for a counter immeduiatly after boot that says XXXX RAM OK and take note of how high it counts. if it stops at 1gb then your board may not recognize the 3rd stick

Also check the motherboard manual for slot placement.

My bet says it has to do with chipset support. Intel used a little trick with i815 chipset. Most boards had three DIMM slots and you could run one double-sided and two single-sided, three single-sided or two double-sided, but you couldn't run three double-sided because the chipset only supported four "banks". This probably isn't the same exact issue, but I bet it's something close.

Here's the supported memory configurations for that motherboard:

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/...b/cs-008808.htm

Note the 512MB DIMM configuration listed in the table.

If it boots up with the right amount of RAM, then the single/double sided issue and chip count would not be the problem in most cases.
I would set the timings for the RAM, in the BIOS, at the slowest setting.
In this case at CAS/RAS/C2R on 3 and see what happens.

I updated the chipset drivers, and that didn't work.

The motherboard recognizes all 1536MB of RAM.

What does the last line mean? I have an intel motherboard, so I think that may be read-only.

the_guy

When you enter the BIOS, there should be something like advanced settings or chipset settings, if not, then place the slowest module first, also try to lower the RAM speed from 133 to 100MHz and see if that helps.

There's no setting for lowering the RAM speed. All the modules are 133MHz.

Does anyone have any idea? I can always try Memtest86 to see if it is the RAM.

the_guy

I know it´s 133MHz each module, but check out what´s on the labels, some would say for example C2 or C3, or CAS 2 or CAS 3. When you have 2 modules with C2 and 1 with C3, then place the C3 module in "bank" 1 and the C2 modules in "bank" 2 and 3.

I´m sure memtest will fail...

Is the page file not filling the partition ? (Just an idea).

@puntoMX: I can't tell what stick is at what speed. They appear to be the same.

@Ponch: How do I figure out if that's the problem?

the_guy

EDIT: I just checked page file settings and realized that they were at 384 MB and 768 MB for minimum and maximum. This was a custom setting. Would this cause the blue screens? I'll check today.

The pagefile shouldn't be a problem.
Try aida32 or everest home edition for the memory specs.

All three sticks appear to be the same.

2 are CL3, but I'll try the third one later.

I'll try memtest sometime soon.

the_guy