B.S.O.D.

[duckingzebra]

Anyone have any idea why a mobo thats supposed to support up to 1 GB of ram would crash when i put anything over 512 MB of ram in it? I thought maybe it was just the second slot was messed up or something, so i moved the one 512 stick to the other slot, and it works fine. Any ideas? I get the BSOD when ever i put in more than 512 MB of ram in my comp. I had this problem and before when i first got the 1 GB kit a while ago (thanks rich) but i just gave up, because the 512 MB's was alot better than the 256 MB's i had in it before.

[Telexen]

Well since it seems to be an OS instability, you should confirm that by running Memtest86+. Normally it's recommended to run it at least 24 hours, but if you're getting a blue-screen almost immediately in Windows, then ~12hours while you sleep will probably be good enough.

If it passes, I would personally jump straight to reinstalling Windows since I think it's some kind of stupid driver/software freaking out about it; but if you want to put off the possibly inevitable, you could try running a Linux LiveCD/DVD for a while to see how it does.


By the way, are you overclocked? What kind of memory timings are you pushing on the sticks? What are they rated for? (post the models and we can easily find out)

[duckingzebra]

Originally Posted by Telexen

Well since it seems to be an OS instability, you should confirm that by running Memtest86+. Normally it's recommended to run it at least 24 hours, but if you're getting a blue-screen almost immediately in Windows, then ~12hours while you sleep will probably be good enough.

If it passes, I would personally jump straight to reinstalling Windows since I think it's some kind of stupid driver/software freaking out about it; but if you want to put off the possibly inevitable, you could try running a Linux LiveCD/DVD for a while to see how it does.


By the way, are you overclocked? What kind of memory timings are you pushing on the sticks? What are they rated for? (post the models and we can easily find out)

Ok, well, it gets the BSOD almost immediately after i start windows, maybe 5 minutes after. I'm not overclocked, its a stick of 512 MB DDR SDRAM from Buffalo select. Oh, and do i have to reformat whole disk to reinstall windows, or no, cause i would really rather not reformat. Oh, and not only am i using the other slot, im also using the other stick of memory, so im pretty sure its not the memory or the slot. :)

[Telexen]

Originally Posted by duckingzebra

Ok, well, it gets the BSOD almost immediately after i start windows, maybe 5 minutes after. I'm not overclocked, its a stick of 512 MB DDR SDRAM from Buffalo select. Oh, and do i have to reformat whole disk to reinstall windows, or no, cause i would really rather not reformat. Oh, and not only am i using the other slot, im also using the other stick of memory, so im pretty sure its not the memory or the slot. :)

I'll clarify this as well as I can. To answer the question directly, no you're not required to format to reinstall windows - but it is widely and highly recommended. The problem with not doing it is that you may be leaving your problem there, though it may also be overwritten. There are several ways to "fix" Windows without reinstalling, though it's unknown if any of them will help you unless the exact problem is isolated.

To answer the question in a better way, you definitely don't need to either reformat OR reinstall Windows if you can figure out what's causing the problem. I think it's better to first rule out hardware by running Memtest, then isolate the problem to the Windows installation by running another OS for a short while.

Perhaps if you're ambitious you can start looking around Windows settings and/or uninstalling some drivers or software that load at boot. However, I'm unsure where to point you to other than perhaps the boot.ini file at this point. (that file can be edited in the System Properties - somewhere. It's been a while since I've run Windows )

[duckingzebra]

So it seems to be the consensus that i need to run memtest first of all?

[Telexen]

Yes, with your full 1gb kit installed, just so we can make sure it isn't a hardware (RAM or mobo) problem.

[duckingzebra]

but its gonna do the BSOD before the memtest gets to run for 12 hours?
edit: ok i dont have any floppy disks....

[Telexen]

If it's a hardware problem then it will error...which means something is wrong with one of the sticks or your board. If it doesn't then it's probably some kind of problem in Windows. Maybe a virus, maybe just buggy software loading on startup.

You can download a .iso CD Image and burn that as well from their site. Or, if you have some kind of linux LiveCD, most have the memtest kernel already on them, and just need the 'memtest' option at boot.