BF2S Forums Problem with Vista Home Premium

I've built 2 systems using a P5N-E SLI board, the same memory and Vista Home Premium. No issues whatsoever except when trying to get 4GB of that memory to run (I had to drop it from 800MHz to 667MHz in the end, even after playing with timings and voltages).

The board doesn't give the memory enough power by default (I think it gives 1.85V and the memory likes 1.9V - but I could've remembered that wrong). You should up it to what it says on the DIMMs themselves. It's very easy to do.

Asus boards, whilst they are very nice and still my favourite, are sometimes a bit of a bitch when it comes to memory. I've built maybe 50 or 60 rigs with Asus boards in the past 4 or 5 years, I've had very few problems overall. The problems that do arise are almost exclusively to do with memory (except for one which had a dodgy BIOS chip and needed RMAing). I've had very strange issues where some memory would work in a board with one type of CPU in, but not with another and all sorts of other weird stuff.

In my experience that memory is extremely reliable and OCs well too. It sounds like you have it configured slightly wrong. Don't worry about it not being on the qualified vendors list.

All the RAID/SATA stuff you've mentioned sounds perfectly normal to me, I don't see what you imagine the problem to be there. The only difficulty you could experience is when trying to install new HDDs, in which case you may have to make them into an array to be recognised (just a simple JBOD - which can be composed of a single disk).

I'd downclock your memory to 533MHz and run for a long period. See if you get any BSODs. If you do, and memtest (run for at least 4 hours) picks up no errors, then it's not a memory issue. It could very easily be some sort of driver issue, but that may be awkward to diagnose.

Berster. I just ran memtest for 4 hours.
I got 575 errors.

Edit - I checked the memory voltage. It had already been tweaked for the computer ( 2.1V ) so I changed it to 2.013V. The CAS timings were wrong for 800MHz ( were at 5-5-5-15 ) so I changed them to 4-4-4-12.

Zimmer wrote:

Berster. I just ran memtest for 4 hours.
I got 575 errors.

Edit - I checked the memory voltage. It had already been tweaked for the computer ( 2.1V ) so I changed it to 2.013V. The CAS timings were wrong for 800MHz ( were at 5-5-5-15 ) so I changed them to 4-4-4-12.

That's not good. Not good at all. Try each stick individually, could be a dual channel issue - shouldn't be though, I've run that memory fine on some of those boards in dual channel. It's probably just a bad stick. If you test each one you'll probably find one works and one doesn't.

Sounds like an RMA job.

Set the command rate to 2T, that should help.

Zimmer wrote:

Both sticks work. I have tried more different settings and none of them work too well. No more BSODS, but I still get unexpected crashes every 15 minutes on programs.

Have you tried putting the sticks in different slots? Try the alternative dual channel config first, then try them not in dual channel - that can help.

As has been suggested, it's probably best to have the command rate set to 2T.

Could be an issue with your memory controller on the MB, it's really hard to say though, but if you keep getting memory errors it's gonna keeping crashing.

Bertster7 wrote:

When running Memtest, did you remember to disable USB legacy support? That's important on Asus Mobos.

Why is it important may I ask?
I didn't turn it off. But memtest already gave me conclusive results and overclockers have agreed to get me a new set of RAM.

Also, I got the RAM running as stable as I can possibly get on 1.92V 4-4-4-12. But GEIL technicians told me that that should not be happening and that the GEIL RAM should be crying out for a high voltage. Which worries me.

Zimmer wrote:

Bertster7 wrote:

When running Memtest, did you remember to disable USB legacy support? That's important on Asus Mobos.

Why is it important may I ask?
I didn't turn it off. But memtest already gave me conclusive results and overclockers have agreed to get me a new set of RAM.

Also, I got the RAM running as stable as I can possibly get on 1.92V 4-4-4-12. But GEIL technicians told me that that should not be happening and that the GEIL RAM should be crying out for a high voltage. Which worries me.

Because Asus boards often give errors in Memtest when it is enabled, it causes conflicts because of the way it's mapped.

I wouldn't worry about running that RAM at fairly high voltages, it's designed with them in mind.

Bertster7 wrote:

Zimmer wrote:

Bertster7 wrote:

When running Memtest, did you remember to disable USB legacy support? That's important on Asus Mobos.

Why is it important may I ask?
I didn't turn it off. But memtest already gave me conclusive results and overclockers have agreed to get me a new set of RAM.

Also, I got the RAM running as stable as I can possibly get on 1.92V 4-4-4-12. But GEIL technicians told me that that should not be happening and that the GEIL RAM should be crying out for a high voltage. Which worries me.

Because Asus boards often give errors in Memtest when it is enabled, it causes conflicts because of the way it's mapped.

I wouldn't worry about running that RAM at fairly high voltages, it's designed with them in mind.

No, you don't get it. If I do run the RAM at the required  ( voltage which this RAM should be wanting with the CAS latency it has ) 2.1V the whole computer fails to boot. If I run at 2.078V I get blue screens. That should not be happening with the RAM.