BSOD after swapping ram, even with old ram

ghost_master2000

so I bought 2 gigs of DDR2 ram today since i realized I only had 1 gig. I previously used DDR ram. My motherboard has 4 ram slots: 2 blue ones for DDR ram, and 2 yellow ones for DDR2 ram. The DDR2 slots are for 533 MHz , but I bought 667 MHz because it said it was backwards compatible with 533 MHz.

So I turned off the computer, unplugged everything. Waited for the light ont eh motherboard to turn off to know that there was no more charge stored. Grounded myself on the case, pulled out the old sticks of ram and put the 2 new ones into the DDR2 slots.

I then plugged everything back in, booted up the computer got to the desktop then got the dreaded BSOD. A thing to note is that I haven't gotten the BSOD since I got this motherboard 2 years ago.

So i figured the memory was bad so I put the old ram back in, booted up the computer and.... BSOD? wtf?

so now, no matter what RAM I have installed it will give the BSOD shortly after reaching the desktop. It does NOT give the BSOD if I boot up in safe mode.



tl;dr (what does that even stand for anyways?)

computer worked fine but only 1 gig of ram
installed new ram
got BSOD
put old ram back in
still BSOD?
booted in safe mode
no BSOD

what the hell happened?

Macro9

You may need to set the amount of voltage your DDR2 chips need. If left on auto or something similar the mobo may not give enough juice to them.

Neaky

I had the same problem with my laptop, turned out the second DIMM slot went "bad".

ghost_master2000

yeah i tried fiddling with the ram settings int eh BIOS, changed the frequency to 533 MHz, and then BUS mode to dual and then single channel, they were all on auto before and no combination works.

since it works in safe mode, but not in regular it almost makes me think it's not the ram but I have no idea, i''ve never had this happen before.


regarding the bad DIMM slot:

but see there are two slots for the DDR ram and two SEPARATE slots for the DDR2 and no matter what slot I use 1 DDR or 1 DDR2 (tried each slot individually) and all cause a crash.

Neaky

Can you try and tell us what the BSOD says? Take a picture when it happens or write parts of it down.

I didn't read you post very well, sorry for the useless post above.

Macro9

Is the ram running at the specified voltage and timings? If you don't want to fiddle with the timings clear your cmos and set the voltage to manufacturer specification.

Down, Set, Go

ghost_master2000 wrote: »

tl;dr (what does that even stand for anyways?)

Too long; didn't read.

Also what kind of motherboard do you have? Are you sure it supports DDR and DDR2?

Macro9

He wouldn't be able to fit DDR2 into DDR slots.

Down, Set, Go

You can fit it, without all that much force either.

Macro9

I can not fit DDR2 onto any of the DDR boards that I have. I just tried to make sure I was remembering correctly.

Down, Set, Go

Yeah, I may or may not be retarded. I was thinking of the time I put some DDR in upside down. I guess my brain just tried to change its story on me when I thought of it. My bad.

OP, try running something like Memtest86 and see how that goes.

Daedalus

Any dust in the RAM slots? That fucked me up once.

ghost_master2000

It's a ASUS P5VDC-X motherboard.

I used one of those can of air things and blew all the dust out before I removed the original two sticks of DDR ram. It was dusty as hell before I did that. I also removed the fan on the CPU heatsink becuase the heatsink was caked with dust on the top.

here's a picture of the BSOD:

this is with the old DDR ram in there, not the new DDR2 ram.

here's what it looks like inside (blue slots are DDR, yellow slots are DDR2):

wunderbar

you know what's awesome about bluescreens, besides the fact that they are blue? See the stop error, and the actual "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" line? Those are actually information the computer is giving you. Hope onto support.microsoft.com and plug the stop error into the search bar, which I have done for you, and you get this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951030/en-us

tlI spent 30 seconds on the internet to find that it actually appears to be a mcafee problem, which makes sense because mcafee wouldn't load when you go into safe mode. You just appear to have bad luck and it happened to happen when you happened to plug in new ram. I wonder what happens if I say happens to many times in a paragraph?

Dunadan019

wunderbar wrote: »

you know what's awesome about bluescreens, besides the fact that they are blue? See the stop error, and the actual "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" line? Those are actually information the computer is giving you. Hope onto support.microsoft.com and plug the stop error into the search bar, which I have done for you, and you get this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951030/en-us

tlI spent 30 seconds on the internet to find that it actually appears to be a mcafee problem, which makes sense because mcafee wouldn't load when you go into safe mode. You just appear to have bad luck and it happened to happen when you happened to plug in new ram. I wonder what happens if I say happens to many times in a paragraph?

i get frustrated and eat some tylenol

ghost_master2000

wunderbar wrote: »

you know what's awesome about bluescreens, besides the fact that they are blue? See the stop error, and the actual "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" line? Those are actually information the computer is giving you. Hope onto support.microsoft.com and plug the stop error into the search bar, which I have done for you, and you get this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951030/en-us

tlI spent 30 seconds on the internet to find that it actually appears to be a mcafee problem, which makes sense because mcafee wouldn't load when you go into safe mode. You just appear to have bad luck and it happened to happen when you happened to plug in new ram. I wonder what happens if I say happens to many times in a paragraph?

weird because I don't have McAfee, i have AVG. I'll try disabling that and see if it works.

I have previously tried using the info from the BSOD to figure out the problem and just got sent in circles, so I didn't really look too hard this time.

I'll let you know how it goes.

edit: nope uninstalled AVG and sitll BSOD. What's weird is that sometimes it happens immediately after I log into my username, and other times it takes up to a minute.

mazelon

Use MSCONFIG in safe mode to disable all the start up programs.

Then just turn them on one at a time until you get your error.

If you still bluescreen with everything disabled it could be something else possibly physical.

Dunadan019

id try to uninstall that particular driver that seems to be causing the crash.

ghost_master2000

god I tried to do a repair to windows with my XP install CD, and it gave the BSOD in the middle of the repair, now I can't even get in with safe mode.

Ego

I know you've changed memory settings, but have you tried loading BIOS defaults or failsafes with both sets of memory? It's worth a shot. The repair function might have trashed your windows installation. The paging fault is indicative of memory problems so that's definitely where you're looking. The chances of one of the sticks of each type of memory going bad, or of one of each type of slot going bad at once, lead me to believe that the culprit (if anything is actually broken) is much more likely to be your memory controller (I assume the motherboard has one and CPU doesn't handle it since the mobo has both types of memory.) Possibly the voltage requested by the DDR2 did it in, though it shouldn't have.

Macro9

DDR2 takes less voltage than DDR. I find it unlikely that his memory controller was killed because of that. He does need to completely reset his bios and make sure the voltage and timing is correct. Which I have suggested several times. Once that is done make a memtest86 bootdisk on a different computer and use that to see if he has bad ram or a faulty memory controller.

Dunadan019

ghost_master2000 wrote: »

god I tried to do a repair to windows with my XP install CD, and it gave the BSOD in the middle of the repair, now I can't even get in with safe mode.

well now you have to reinstall windows most likely....

hope you didnt have any data on there you really wanted.

clear CMOS, insert DDR2, format and reinstall windows.

ghost_master2000

Macro9 wrote: »

DDR2 takes less voltage than DDR. I find it unlikely that his memory controller was killed because of that. He does need to completely reset his bios and make sure the voltage and timing is correct. Which I have suggested several times. Once that is done make a memtest86 bootdisk on a different computer and use that to see if he has bad ram or a faulty memory controller.

that was one of the first things I did, even before I asked on here, was to reset the BIOS to defaults.

ran memtest86 and got a bunch of errors and it stopped on test 4. I read there site but have no idea what it means. here's a pic:



edit: ran it again and 0 errors in the row thing but it gave teh same unexpected intterupt - halting error but only 74% through test3.

Macro9

ghost_master2000 wrote: »

Macro9 wrote: »

DDR2 takes less voltage than DDR. I find it unlikely that his memory controller was killed because of that. He does need to completely reset his bios and make sure the voltage and timing is correct. Which I have suggested several times. Once that is done make a memtest86 bootdisk on a different computer and use that to see if he has bad ram or a faulty memory controller.

that was one of the first things I did, even before I asked on here, was to reset the BIOS to defaults.

ran memtest86 and got a bunch of errors and it stopped on test 4. I read there site but have no idea what it means. here's a pic:



edit: ran it again and 0 errors in the row thing but it gave teh same unexpected intterupt - halting error but only 74% through test3.

Run the test with your DDR now. If you are getting errors on that it may well mean you have a bad memory controller. If your voltage is correct while running each type of memory then they shouldn't cause a problem. Just reset the bios after swapping sticks.

edit:

I went through a similar problem with a P35 based board recently. I had been running some older DDR2 due to my previous kit giving out on me. I bought a Corsair Dominator 1066 kit and installed them. I kept getting lockups and crashes after that. Turns out my memory controller decided to take a shit as well.

You could try giving a bit more voltage to your ram and northbridge. Then run the tests again.

ghost_master2000

when I put the ram into the DDR2 slots I had to push pretty hard to get them in. i definitely lined up the little notch before I started pushing though. It seemed like the motherboard flexed quite a bit when I pushed before the little latches snapped.

could I have physically broken something on the motherboard that is causing this, or woudl it just not work at all?

edit: I should note that it didn't flex any more than when i was just swapping in and out the DDR ram sticks before i bought the DDR2, it just seemed like an excessive flex that may have potentially caused damage if done multiple times, but then again this is only my 2nd/3rd computer since mine usually last for quite a while.

Down, Set, Go

That's entirely possible.

Barrakketh

I'd try testing it with a known good PSU. A bad one can cause crashes and memory errors.

ghost_master2000

could it just go bad like that? I mean i've had this PSU for over 2 years, and like I said this is the first BSOD I've had.

Macro9

Hardware can fail at any time. If you have a multimeter you can check to see if the PSU is bad.

Barrakketh

Macro9 wrote: »

Hardware can fail at any time.

In my case I took it apart after it was replaced and found what appeared to be fluid that had leaked from a capacitor on the PCB. The fan felt like it took too much force to rotate (relative to every other fan in my computer), so I think it failed and caused the PSU overheat.

ghost_master2000

well, i ended up doing a format and reinstall of windows after backing up what I needed to. and no more BSOD, but I keep getting all kinds of file read errors among other errors. Pretty sure somethings not right with some hardware.

Thanks for the help guys.

ghost_master2000

oddly enough it just started working fine again on it's own... weird...