Stupidity and the Quest for the Truth

[congo]

In another forum I get someone who says "I thought you could put 2 more ram modules in the mainboard and run four modules in dual channel mode..."

So, I think, "No Way" and I go to my mainboard manual which says "sure..... go for it as long as the ram total amount is equal on both channels".

I put the ram in and I got a noboot into windows, froze on a black screen. Reboot - keyboard error, Blue Screen of Death on windows load. Check BIOS set defaults, reboot - got a screen I NEVER saw before, keyboard error, DVDROM not recognised at all.

I took the ram out. Reboot, still no DVDROM, change the DVDROM over to secondary IDE as slave, it works fine. So, I destroyed the I/O chip on my mainboard by expanding ram beyond 1 gb.

I ring up for warranty on my mainboard, and I'm about to order a replacement because I ain't waiting for warranty work...... uhuuuh, no way.

I decided to Flash BIOS as a last resort. (I tried everything else!) and VOILA! I got my Primary IDE slave link back. So my new mainboard is fine...... Whew!

I boot into windows and there are now error messages, eminating from a now disfunctional firewall. I try to uninstall the firewall, no go. Tried to delete registry keys to firewall....... no luck, darn thing protected itself.

Format.

Well, my FS9 is running a lot faster on a clean install now!

I have absolutely no idea what just happened to me today, perhaps someone could shed some light?

The only thing I was thinking, was that the new additional ram was single sided modules and the older stuff is double sided, other than that, both work fine on the board seperately.

If someone told me adding ram would corrupt BIOS and wipe out my firewall, (and consequently lock me out of internet security) and cause me to re-install the op sys,  I would have said they were nuts, but hey..... I'm still learning.

[GeForce]

The only thing I was thinking, was that the new additional ram was single sided modules and the older stuff is double sided, other than that, both work fine on the board seperately

That's what I thought when I read through it the first time. Maybe you were right, but I've never heard of anything like that before. But perhaps the mobo can configure itself for one type of RAM or the other, not both at the same time.

The only other thing that sprang to mind was voltage uses of the two types. Are they the same?

Sorry I can't be of any more help, but at least you've got your system running again.

Jon

[luke]

Or may be the moral is, do not experiment on your own gear if somebody says "...I thought............"

On the other hand no risk no learn.

Lucky you know what you are doing & came out of it alive.                                luke

[congo]

Well, I hope I'm still ok.

I lost the DVDRW drive again today. I set the jumpers to "cable select" instead of "master and slave" and it's back up and running for the rest of the day.
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This is how I reinstalled the op sys....... kinda wierd.

The op sys in trouble was on a 160gb HDD on primary IDE as master drive with the DVDRW as a slave.

I had an 80gb hard disk with a blank 20gb partition in the front of it, as master drive on IDE-2. The second 60gb partition on this drive holds my FS9 game and files.
The slave position on this cable is empty.

I swapped the Primary and Secondary IDE cables around on the mainboard, making the 80gb HDD with the  20gb first partition the boot drive, and thus rendering  my old HDD and op sys as storage on the secondary IDE channel.

I installed windows on the spare drive, then copied my favorites and anything else I needed to salvage from the old system. I got the whole op sys tweaked and fully installed with internet security.

I then formatted the original op sys on the 160gb drive's first small partition. Next, I used DiskWizard for Windows (Free from Seagate) to  file copy all the new op sys's partition over to the 160gb drives empty first partition.

Next, I swapped the IDE cables again at the mainboard and booted into my new system on the original drive without actually having to install it there, as the files had actually just been copied direct from an active op sys to the old drive.

The advantage in this is twofold at least.

1. I have a tweaked and ready backup system on the 80gb drive.

2. I could just copy it back to the other drive again should I ever decide to test anyone's theories again.  

[the_autopilot]

Running two different kinds of RAM modules in dual channel (double vs single sided) will get you in some serious crap.

In dual channel, all memory modules MUST be the same. No exceptions.

Here's the weird part, the computer should have booted to post and gave you an error during memory check. Remove the memory and it should have booted fine. Why it screwed with your IDE controllers and windows setup is strange.

And you can put four modules (or more) in dual channel. I'm doing that right now. The thing is though, all my ram modules are exactly the same and I put those in there before installed windows.

[congo]

Yeah, it was a pretty stupid experiment, but, someone had to do it