Computer Faulty? (Fixed)

Pali

Seems the problem with the memory was old bios, and the BSOD issue was Zone Alarm for some reason.

Looks like everything is working out currently.. hopefully no more problems. Cheers.





Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Asus GeForce 8800 GTS HTDP 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)

GeIL 2GB (4x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB)

Zalman CNPS9700-NT nVidia Tritium CPU Cooler

Samsung SpinPoint T 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache

500W Blue Storm III PSU

Litescribe DVD drive



Well, I was like wow, money. So I went and purchased these parts.

So i've built her up and turned her on, nice so far, splash screen of the motherboard.. no go, not even post.

I take out the ram and try different configurations, seems all the sticks work, but the motherboard doesnt like having 4GB installed, but loads up fine on 3GB.

Okay, I can deal with 3GB ram for the time being.

Now I move onto installing the OS, Vista Ultimate. It goes through fine untill the finilizing installation where it just freezes up.. okay I say and decide to try installing my copy of XP Pro SP2 instaid.

It actually installs windows XP and i'm happy cause the machine is working.

Gah! Installing the programs and apparently Ultramon kills the GFX card drivers (wierd) so I roll back, and it's working again so I skip the Ultramon and decide to install some AV (AVG Free) and Firewall (ZoneAlarm) and I get a BSOD.

On reboot I get the BSOD ~6 sec into windows up, and I even get BSOD on Safe Mode. GAH!


So, I come here for help, Is it a faulty motherboard, faulty ram? something i've overlooked?

All the settings of the parts are stock, no modifications or anything. All the parts registered as working when I had a working copy of windows for a while.


TL;DR

-- Motherboard doesnt like 4GB of ram, likes 3GB

-- Vista wont install, XP does

-- BSOD after installing programs, BSOD in safe mode.

Beazle

Download and run memtest86. I bet you have a bad stick of RAM. You could also try just one stick of RAM at a time and see which one gives you problems.

Alethiometer

Seconding the RAM test, but it could also be that you've got some sort of hardware conflict. Usually that only occurs when you move XP to a motherboard it doesn't recognize or something. In this case, it's probably the video card. Here's a tech support thread about Vista install crashes, which matches what you're seeing pretty much exactly.

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/541011-work-around-procedure-vista-installation.html

Pali

Memtest86 isnt showing any errors on any of the sticks when i've ran them through individually.

The part thats really getting to me is that the motherboard wont let me enter bios setup when all four channels are full with ram, but allows me no problem when theres only three of the four channels full irregardless of the combination of RAM sticks.

I mean freezing on the splash and not being responsive. Thats annoying me, although all the slots are working themselves it just doesnt like them all being filled at once.


I'll look into the Video card and Vista when I have a spare PCI-E one to test, probably Saturday.