Vista 64 bit with 8 GB won't boot

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

So I installed Vista 64 bit for the sole purpose of using more than 4 GBs of RAM. I installed it with 4 GBs of RAM, and I also tested each RAM chip invidivudally and they all worked. But with all 8 GBs the OS won't boot. It gets to the status indicator bar that rolls back left and right, but then it either freezes or it just restarts. Does anybody know why this is the case? Some people have mentioned using 8 GBs without a problem.

I have an MSI P6N SLI, with an E4600 Intel Chip, running an ATI Radeon 2600XT video card. I am pretty sure I am running all 64 bit drivers at this point.

 

[hennessy1]

Have you installed this update?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777/en-us

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: hennessy1
Have you installed this update?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777/en-us

He installed with 4gig, that issue would have come up then.
Bill

 

[hennessy1]

have you tried a fresh install with 2gb of ram or 1gb and then install that update and update all the drivers then install the rest of the ram?

 

[QuixoticOne]

I've got a P35 chipset board (ASUS P5K-E) with a Q6600 CPU in it and it has run Vista 64 flawlessly from day one except for the usual occasional Vista annoyance / bug.
I'm running with the recent NVIDIA drivers on an 8800GT, and am using onboard sound.

I didn't even have to install with reduced RAM, I just installed from DVD with all 8 GB present and it just worked.

I suggest that maybe your problem is related to BIOS issues or one or more bad device drivers for your components that isn't handling 64-bit mode well.

Try booting into safe mode with command prompt if you can, and enable various kinds of boot logging and crash logging to see if you can figure it out.

Also you might consider trying a using a restore point back before you installed the updates to the storage / video drivers or something to see if that helps.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: hennessy1
have you tried a fresh install with 2gb of ram or 1gb and then install that update and update all the drivers then install the rest of the ram?

That update isn't variable, your system doesnt work with 4 gig of memory if you have a MB with that issue. Going from 4 to 8 doesnt make it occur, going from 2-4 does.

 

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

unfortunately yes. Well sort of, I installed the OS with 4GBs of RAM, and it works with 4 GBs of RAM, then I installed the update, and it still freezes upon startup. I have to look into what other drivers I need to update, but my guess is that a driver for a 64 bit OS would be the same regardless of whether i am using 4GBs or ram or 8. It really bugs me that you can't use more than 4 GBs or RAM, wasn't that the whole point of 64 bit? What good is this if half the people who try this can't get it to work?

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: DeadSeaSquirrels
unfortunately yes. Well sort of, I installed the OS with 4GBs of RAM, and it works with 4 GBs of RAM, then I installed the update, and it still freezes upon startup. I have to look into what other drivers I need to update, but my guess is that a driver for a 64 bit OS would be the same regardless of whether i am using 4GBs or ram or 8. It really bugs me that you can't use more than 4 GBs or RAM, wasn't that the whole point of 64 bit? What good is this if half the people who try this can't get it to work?

There is no truth to the statement that 1/2 the people can't get it to work. Even the known bug that Vista shipped with only affected small number of motherboards. There have been some buggy drivers (creative comes to mind) that didnt work well with 4gig or more, mostly those have been fixed in the last year.

Id start by yanking cards (sound, network, whatever you can and still boot) to see if you can narrow it down.

Also, as someone asked, does safe mode work? Do you have tweaked memory timings in your bios? Did you put the memory into the correct banks?

Bill

 

[Nothinman]

Also hit F8 and disable reboot on STOP errors and see if it's a STOP error or just a hardware reset.

 

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

well when I did a safe mode boot, it got caught up on crcdriver.sys

Does that mean anything to anybody? I will look into removing cards. But the only thing I have attached at this point is the video card, and hard drives, everything else is onboard. The video card I specifically installed 64 bit drivers for, and it actually works fine with 4 GBs or RAM, though I am guessing that isn't perfect definitive proof against it. It may be the hard drives, but in what way I don't know because I would think with the hard drives either it can read the drives or not, not somewhere in between and it obviously looks like it is reading some of it.

 

[mechBgon]

If your P6N SLI doesn't have the latest BIOS revision, you might want to start with that. I recall seeing something similar in Asus's Knowledge Base, so I'll go rummage around for possible leads on that.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Update your BIOS to the latest reportedly stable version, clear your BIOS settings to defaults, and then set them back to appropriate values you've recorded from your original settings.

I have a motherboard that doesn't in BIOS RESERVE the proper memory space for devices that are actually on the motherboard, but reports those areas as FREE RAM.
Needless to say if I install over a certain amount of memory in that system the OS will crash rather badly once it runs for a while and starts to use RAM that isn't really RAM. I would NOT be shocked to see a similar problem with yours.

Turn OFF ACPI in the BIOS for testing.

Set: PLUG AND PLAY OS? iteratively to YES and NO
and see if that makes the situation better one way or the other.

Use the BIOS setup to disable things like onboard sound, parallel port, game port, SATA (if not needed), et. al.