RAM upgrade - borked computer

[vanMould]

Remember the thread I started about choosing a graphics card which ended up in some sort of quest to get the damn computer to work again? Well the same machine is now causing headache after an attempted RAM upgrade.

So my brother got a Kingston 2GB PC2-5300 (KVR667D2N5/2G) stick for christmas to add to the 1GB that he already got (KVR667D2N5/1G) on a MSI K9N6SGM-V motherboard. I've understood that the two dimms should be perfectly compatible. Thing is; as soon as we installed the new stick the monitor stopped responding when booting. My brother claims that this has happened before, but is usually sorted out after a reboot which didn't work now. The wierd thing is that after experimenting with changing the dimms around the monitor stopped responding even when we changed back to the original configuration. The same thing happens when we try to boot without any memory at all. I've also tried resetting the CMOS and starting it with the graphics card removed (there's an onboard 6100 circuit as well). No results so far. Does anyone have any idea what's going on here?

[MadCow809]

That used to happen on my old AMD machine quite often, I think it's the motherboard's problem, cos it won't detect all 3 sticks of ram.

I don't know, in fact I don't even know exactly how I got all 3 sticks to work, all I know is that you need to be patient and just keep trying to ram out.

And when you do get the pc to boot up, run memtest, just for good measure.

[vanMould]

Originally Posted by MadCow809

That used to happen on my old AMD machine quite often, I think it's the motherboard's problem, cos it won't detect all 3 sticks of ram.

I don't know, in fact I don't even know exactly how I got all 3 sticks to work, all I know is that you need to be patient and just keep trying to ram out.

And when you do get the pc to boot up, run memtest, just for good measure.

Ram out?

I gonna try and have a session or two of rebooting, just to try it out. Thanks.

Hm...I also just realized that I haven't looked up what the motherboard manual says about the memory bus...

[Vette Boss]

Did he remove the battery when resetting the CMOS? Sometimes that is necessary, along with unplugging the power lead and letting it sit for a while.

It can be a configuration issue as well, two sticks of different sizes may not run in dual-channel. Meaning the RAM needs to be in the slots that won't be in dual-channel.

[MadCow809]

Sorry, I made a typo in my post, I mean to swap the ram out. Keep trying until you can get the PC to boot up. In my case it was the motherboard that was faulty, it takes a few tries to get the boad to read all 3 sticks of ram.

[vanMould]

Originally Posted by Vette Boss

Did he remove the battery when resetting the CMOS? Sometimes that is necessary, along with unplugging the power lead and letting it sit for a while.

It can be a configuration issue as well, two sticks of different sizes may not run in dual-channel. Meaning the RAM needs to be in the slots that won't be in dual-channel.

That whole-hearted CMOS reset sounds a bit promising, I'm gonna try that as soon as possible.

I've looked through the manual now, and it seems that the memories are made to run in dual channel. The new one doesn't make a matching pair with the old one though, as it has twice the capacity and for some reason just half the size. That might be a problem, but it should still work with just either of the sticks.

Originally Posted by MadCow809

Sorry, I made a typo in my post, I mean to swap the ram out. Keep trying until you can get the PC to boot up. In my case it was the motherboard that was faulty, it takes a few tries to get the boad to read all 3 sticks of ram.

So...do you mean that I should try out every single possible configuration or that I should bet on the first one and keep rebooting? That board has just got two dimm-buses though, so I haven't go many configurations to switch between.

[MadCow809]

If it only has 2 ram slots then keep trying until the PC boots up. Unplug all the unnecessary devices such as IDE/SATA & your secondary video card.

And don't worry about the dual channel problem, the motherboard will automatically deactivate the dual channel mode.

[mu51im]

maybe its as simple as putting the sticks in the wrong slot? maybe?

[vanMould]

Ok...I've tried stripping the computer down to the motherboard with CPU (and fan) and the necessary power and switch connections, reset the CMOS with the battery removed and power disconnected, reboot it 20-30 times in total while slowly adding more and more components. And the led on the screen still glows of orange...horrible, horrible orange...

We are considering ordering a new motherboard tomorrow morning for the sake of simplicity. We're not entirely sure which and why but I still think it would solve the problem. The original cards have been causing trouble ever since we got them...

Originally Posted by mu51im

maybe its as simple as putting the sticks in the wrong slot? maybe?

Sorry. There's two sticks and two slots, and I've tried every possible combination...

[FATMOUSE]

If you've tried booting the motherboard/cpu/ram/videocard/psu only and it doesn't work, then one of those components is defective. Perhaps you have another computer to try out the easy swaps? (ram/videocard)

It's possible something might be broken by the sounds of it.

[vanMould]

That's pretty much what I've done, and my reasoning is that if the motherboard is intact then it should report any other fault. I can't understand when or how I could have broken it, but we've ordered a new one now that should show up early next week. I just hope the damn thing will sort itself out then...

[PacketCollision]

Motherboards often won't boot at all when they don't recognise any RAM. Occasionally they beep in meaningful ways though, is yours? What kind of BIOS does the motherboard have (Award, Phoenix, etc.)? I have also see motherboards refuse to boot at all without a graphics card, but that one almost always causes an error code to be played through the PC speaker.

I would bet on the motherboard too, if no error codes are being played, but check to make sure the speaker is plugged in and let us know if it's making noise.

[vanMould]

That speaker has always been a mystery. The chassis came with a small speaker that as fitted to the motherboard and looks like a big condensator or transistor. We've never gotten them to work properly though, but I think dad tried to fit another computerspeaker as well, so I think the motherboard was at fault.

We got the new motherboard today and everything finally seems to be working. The speaker suddendly started working too and gave off the short beeps, which I appearantly refered to a missing keyboard as they went away once we've sorted out the drivers.

Thank for the help everyone! Hope haven't bothered you too much