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Has my RAM died on my A7V?

D

DOOPYLOOPY

Senior member
I had my modem turned on when i shut the computer down then i went to turn it off after the computer had shutdown and the computer started to turn itself back on. So i immediately hit the power off switch for 4 secs and thought nothing of it.

I think i turned it off in the middle of its memory check or something like that. Because when i next tried to turn it on it wouldnt' get past cheching memory...It was intermittent. Sometimes it would write out part of the "Del to enter setup Esc to skip test" And i do mean part of that would appear then the computer would hang. Sometimes it went straight to the BIOS itself and said the previous poweron attempt didn't work and it advised me that i could change some settings. But i couldnt' use the keyboard at all because it was unresponsive. I tried many times to restart the machine and a couple of times it didnt' even display anything on my screen. Sometimes it hung during the memory check and sometimes it hung during the msg to enter BIOS. It even went all the way through a couple of times to Windows but then it promptly crapped itself and Explorer would hang immediately after I put in my login.

However, a couple of days ago I turned it on and it started working again fully. Or so I thought, since playing with it a lot more it seems a LOT more unstable. Different programs may crash at different times and sometimes the machine will just hang. Sometimes i have to restart it other times i can wait and it seems to reanimate itself.

WHAT IS THIS????

I'm fairly certain i've screwed the memory something shocking and the best way is to get a new 128mb dimm. Do you concur? What do you all think?

I really really really need to fix this it's driving me insane when the computer just pauses!

GRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

 
Hmm, weird.
Try getting into the bios to check the settings. If they are all correct especially the CPU Vcore setting, then there's something wrong.
 
I think your memory is fine..one way to check it is to disable power on quick boot and let the system check the memory for 3 times..anyway..you might want to unplug everything then plug them back in..(power core, atx power connector, cpu, ram, vga, sound, etc)..
 
I wouldn't suspect a hardware problem based on your symptoms.
Hardware problems are almost always consistent in the way they fail.
There are several things you can do to isolate and correct the problem.

1. Boot into BIOS and set everything to their default settings. Test
2. Update your bios to the latest, rev 1004c.
The code and instructions can be found starting at ASUS Software Download
3. Update you VIA drivers to the latest. These can be found at the above link under 'Other Drivers and Utilities'.
4. Reinstall your Windows OS if all of the above fails (I'm assuming you're running windows). Then reinstall your various device drivers as needed.
5. If still having problems. Remove all adapters and unplug all devices except the graphics adapter, mouse, keyboard, and the harddrive. If it works, add them back one at a time until you find the culprit.

Sometimes, moving adapters to different PCI slots can solve the problem. The A7V shares IRQs, see page 30 of your ASUS A7V Users Manual.
Also, I had a flaky unstable system when my IBM 75GXP was plugged into the Ultra ATA100 onboard controller. Moving it to the Primary IDE controller solved the problem. I think I was downlevel on the Promise controller device drivers but I haven't moved back onto that controller to check yet. <-- try this first, now that I think about it more.
 
I have already gotten a new stick of RAM so I will see how things go. At one point when i actually got through to windows then it promptly crashed i got this message.

Setupapi.dll

X Assertion Failure at line 403 in file
D:\nt\private\windows\setup\setupapi\diutil.c: pDeviceInfoSet->DeviceInfoCount > 0

Call DebugBreak()?

YES NO

I picked YES.

Anyone have any idea what the hell this might have meant?

I'm thinking i might need to reinstall Windows also.


Oh well i'll see if i crash anymore with this new stick of RAM.

Thanks everyone.
 
*bump*

I got a stick of Winword RAM that I'm assurd isnt' generic. Sounds fairly generic to me though

I've been crashing out of games too. Even more consistently than when i had my Hyundai RAM. So far every time i've gone into a game I've been kicked out of it when i'm in the middle of it.

EEEP🙁

 
🙁

I have now reformatted my computer totally. And i have reinstalled onto it all the latest drivers and the VIA 4-1 drivers and everything. And my games are still crashing when i go into them. This is really starting to depress me!

Please help!

Everything was working fine for me untill about 2 weeks ago when the situation that i described above happened.

Can this still be a software problem? Everything else works great just my games, I'm thinking of trying a different graphics card perhaps.
 
Take a real hard look at your IRQ sharing. I had a previoiusly rock stable system that I redid windows on and it went to hell on me. After juggling the IRQ's around I got it back to normal. Also, I had the I/O voltage set at the ASUS default of 3.56 and coincidentally my modem wacked out. It kept kicking me offline. I yelled at my ISP and they made a few suggestions which I looked into. I dropped the voltage to 3.3v and pulled the modem to try another. Dam, it worked fine. After letting the first modem sit overnight I put it back in with a fresh driver install. SO far so good. I suspect the modem did not like the voltage increase but ???

Things to consider. Good luck.
 
The system wasn't stable before my reformat. That was why i was reformatting. But it was stable before i turned it off in the middle of it booting up.

I'm at the point where i need a lot of things to test it.
I think i might need a new graphics card if the only thing it is really crapping out on me is my games.

Perhaps?

IRQs don't seem to be a problem or conflict at all.
 
Have you tried moving your harddrive off the Ultra ATA100 IDE interface to the Primary (ata66) interface? Seriously, give it a try if you haven't. Sure solved some flaky problems for me. Only takes a sec to move the cable.🙂
 
I think you should really try moving out all non-essential stuff (extra CD drives, hard drives, sound card, network card, etc.), and try reinstalling Windows with only your main hard drive, video card, and CD-ROM. Also set your BIOS to most conservative settings, and make sure your CPU is not overclocked. If you can finally get Windows running stable in this situation, consider optimizing the BIOS settings, and then start moving in your cards/drives one at a time. If you get instability all of a sudden, then you can probably figure out what's causing it.

Also, I had major problems with my SBLive - random freezes all the time. Definitely try installing Windows _without_ the SBLive in the system. Although many people run fine with them (after reserving IRQs in the BIOS for the SBLive and Emulation), in my case, it just didn't work out. Some have suggested that maybe old SBLive cards have problems with the A7V in particular (my SBLive is about 1 year old...).

Finally, it's always possible that when you hit the power switch during the memory check that you fried something on the board - unlikely, but possible, especially if you have a real cheap power supply and a not-so-good power connection to your place. I have an older PII system in my lab that acts really weird - can't install OS's sometimes (freezes or BSODs), and one time the CD-ROM started ejecting randomly for about a minute... I think there's some tiny thing busted on the motherboard that allows it to work most of the time, but sometimes causes weird instability.

Good luck...

BTW, I just remembered - when I tried installing the leaked Via 4in1 drivers ver. 4.25, I had some instability - make sure your using the official 4.24a from Via's site... Also try the newest leaked Detonator drivers too.
 
I just thought of something else you might try. Another program, running on your computer may be causing your games to fail. Try going into the Close Program window (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and close as many things as you can.
 
😀
I am 100% certain that it has been my RAM that has failed all along.

GOD I FEEL GREAT!!!!!!

not to mention vindicated.

I went to my friends house who is a system engineer and tried an alternative video card(G400) and it still crashed. Then he went to his DELL server and pulled out a chunky peice of ram that was a 100% genuine intel-certified non-generic 128mb PC133 ECC stick.

We put that in my machine and i went to play a game and it ran beautifully not a hitch in the world! I was playing for a reasonable amount of time too.

He agrees with me after seeing these things that it is my RAM and that the crappy WINWORD RAM they replaced me with is just generic RAM.

SO THANK GOD FOR THAT!!!!!!

Thank you all very much for your input I really really appreciate it!
 
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