I purchased two new sticks of DDR2 RAM that are identical (except a different version apparently) to the two sticks I currently have in my rig. The only difference is my old sticks are version 2.something and the new ones are ver6.3

Anyways, so I tried putting the two new sticks in with the old two, on the BIOS boot screen it got to the CPU then froze. I tried again with just the old ones, it worked, tried putting the warmer of the two new ones in and it worked although I didn't test any games.

Then I tried putting the 4th one back in and the system got to windows then restarted, then restarted during the BIOS boot again with a strange graphical mixture of colours I can't describe. It kept restarting so i shut it down and took the ram out and tried the 4th stick without the 3rd one, it worked until i tried to play games. mass Effect did not reach the main menu more than once out of 8 tries before getting one of two or three errors (I don't know what they meant). Tried playing Left 4 Dead, almost got through the 1st level then it crashed. I have since removed the new sticks.

Is one of my new sticks deffective? Or am i doing it wrong?

I have an ASUS P5N32-E SLI mobo, which has 4 slots and can hold up to 8 gigs of RAM.
Windows XP
The RAM I have;
Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB 2X1GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 240PIN Dual Channel Memory
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=18580&vpn=TWIN2X2048%2D6400C4&manufacture=Corsair

Try booting with each of the new sticks individually and see what happens. If you can't boot with just the one, it's probably bad.

Not unheard of, but unusual.

Try memtest86+

why on Earth are you using 8 gigs RAM with XP???

why on Earth are you using 8 gigs RAM with XP???

Could have 64bit?

I have an ASUS P5N32-E SLI mobo, which has 4 slots and can hold up to 8 gigs of RAM.
Windows XP
The RAM I have;
Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB 2X1GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 240PIN Dual Channel Memory
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=18580&vpn=TWIN2X2048%2D6400C4&manufacture=Corsair

"It features 1333/1066/800/533MHz FSB, dual-channel un-buffered DDR2 800/667/533 x 4DIMMs with a maximum of 8GB. "


"Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB 2X1GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 240PIN Dual Channel Memory"

So the new sticks have the exact same settings, even "CL 4-4-4-12" ? I'm thinking that maybe the timing settings might be different. Also all 4 ram sticks are DDR2-800?

I'd do what Turner said, that's the easiest. Try booting with only one stick, trying every stick.

Also ask in Corsair's forum, because there might be a very subtle technical reason involving the ram's manufacturing.

@GG, Turner and Bratmon, I'll try your suggestions asap.

why on Earth are you using 8 gigs RAM with XP???

Could have 64bit?

*facepalms* I strongly recommend you re-read my post.

Just because your mobo can handle 8 gigs doesn't mean that the OS can. XP has a hard limit of 4gb of ram addressable. Anything over it is a waste. That's a limitation of the 32-bit OS.

Now, if you're still on 32bit XP (which you haven't explicitly stated yet), 8gb is simply going to be wasted. If you're on 64bit XP, then you should be fine.

However, since the computer appears to be failiing before the OS load, this shouldn't be an issue. Also, I've never tried to boot more than 4gb of RAM into a 32bit OS, so I don't know where exactly it would fail.

I am only trying to put 4 gigs in, and I assumed 32bit XP did not need saying, considering 64bitXP is unstable and unsupported.

I am only trying to put 4 gigs in, and I assumed 32bit XP did not need saying, considering 64bitXP is unstable and unsupported.

Was the problem solved?

Was the problem solved?

Haven't gotten back to fixing it yet, I'll do that tomorrow.

Anyways, so I tried putting the two new sticks in with the old two, on the BIOS boot screen it got to the CPU then froze. I tried again with just the old ones, it worked, tried putting the warmer of the two new ones in and it worked although I didn't test any games.
This implied that you were trying to use all of the sticks at the same time.

Then I tried putting the 4th one back in and the system got to windows then restarted, then restarted during the BIOS boot again with a strange graphical mixture of colours I can't describe. It kept restarting so i shut it down and took the ram out and tried the 4th stick without the 3rd one, it worked until i tried to play games.
This doesn't really say otherwise, but also suggests that the two original ones were seated while you were testing the two new ones. So it looks to us like you're trying to use more than 4gb in an XP rig.

Again, I've never tried to boot a machine that has more memory than the OS can handle, so I don't know how that will work.

It may be impossible to run all 4 sticks together on your motherboard. With nVidia's chipsets, its actually extremely unlikely that you can keep the system stable with 4 sticks of memory. My own motherboard (a 780i chipset which is just a small update of the 680i) wouldnt work with 4 sticks on the first two boards I had. 3rd and current one is stable, but there's always that specter of failure. Try both of the new sticks and one of the old ones. Then try all combinations of new and old. I have a hunch that it will be stable as long as its only 3 sticks.

I run 4 2GB sticks on an nVidia 750 SLI mobo (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-p5n-d.html) running 64-bit Vista with no problems whatsoever.

Try memtest86+Agreed.

This implied that you were trying to use all of the sticks at the same time.


This doesn't really say otherwise, but also suggests that the two original ones were seated while you were testing the two new ones. So it looks to us like you're trying to use more than 4gb in an XP rig.

Again, I've never tried to boot a machine that has more memory than the OS can handle, so I don't know how that will work. People didn't read it right in assuming he was talking about already having 2 2GB sticks and adding 2 2GB sticks.



The RAM I have;
Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB 2X1GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 240PIN Dual Channel Memory

That implies that the 2GB comes in 2 1GB sticks. Like how this add says that 4GB comes in 2 2GB sticks. People were reading it wrong to think he had 2 2GB sticks and was adding 2 2GB sticks.

I have four sticks of ram, each one is one gigabyte. Totaling 4 gigabytes of ram. Thankfully Cutlass understands.

I run 4 2GB sticks on an nVidia 750 SLI mobo (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-p5n-d.html) running 64-bit Vista with no problems whatsoever.

Agreed.

I have 4x 2GB sticks on my 780i SLI, but like I said, it took 3 tries to get that to work ( more specifically, 2 changes of the motherboard)

Well, it sure sounded like you were talking about 2 gig sticks...my bad.

Well, it sure sounded like you were talking about 2 gig sticks...my bad.

:agree:

It sounded like he was talking about 1GB sticks. In fact, the TWIN2X-6400C4 2X1GB should have given it away. You people just need to read closer.

I got to 2x, and my eyes glazed over.

Tested the sticks again, ran memtest86 to test it out and see how it works with my origional 2 sticks in, it was fine. Tested one of the new sticks by itself, its fine. Put in the stick I think had caused issues before, and it came up with a couple of errors.

One, when I started Mass Effect it blue screened due to "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" and some bug code string at the bottom it doesn't give you time to write down (ie several things like this where # stands for a number between 1-9: 0X000000###).

Second, during the test it recorded two ECC Correctable Errors.

3. The test was 100% complete with 90% completed on what I assume is the last thing it was doing (so I guess it was really more like 99.99% done, but it said 100% but did not finish), however it stopped due to a CPU interruption? There was also a number of strings of code (like the BSOD one but less 0s) on the screen but I have no idea what they meant.

It means get a new stick :p

Well yes I figured it was defective, but I'd like to understand the error a bit more.

It means its bad. Check the old RAM in the same slot as this new one was. If its not causing issues, one of the ram banks on the new module is probably bad. If you have errors all over the place, as in the addresses arent largely sequential but bounce around the whole module, then its likely a problem with the memory controller. But in this case, both the old and new RAM would be erroring out.