System Instability - SATA?

[Ris3n_Da3mon]

My friend Devin recently bought a new system and it's having massive stability issues... explorer crashing completely, many Stop 0x04 messages, etc etc. Just general crappyness

the specs are-

ATI allinwonder 9800 Pro
Maxtor 6y160m0 SATA
hl-dt-st cdrw gce-8400b
sony dvd ddu1612
a7n8x deluxe (ultra 400) - v2.0, BIOS v1.006
network card, audio and such is built in obviously because of the nforce2 chipset
athlon xp 2700+
1gig matched pair pc2700 corsair ram

we really are having trouble figuring out why this system is just generally being lame. any help? i'm thinking it's either WinXP PRO SP1 being stupid about having a gig of RAM, or the SATA drive acting up.. thinking of maybe updating to a WD2500JB, but really don't want to waste more money on hardware that will just keep the system at this level of instability. thanks.

 

[Ris3n_Da3mon]

what kind of details do you want? got it set at 2-2-2-5,
dual channel mode @ 166mhz, the product # is TWINX1024-2700LL I think if you wanna look it up.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80060-14

that's some information at ZipZoomFLy for stats and such... and the manufacturer's website for that RAM is

http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/products/specs/twinx1024-2700ll.pdf

that's the best info on it i could find there.

I removed one stick last night, so now it's 512mb in single-channel mode.... my system seems to be working pretty good now... *sigh*... thinking of just sending it back to Corsair and getting 2 sticks of 256mb matched pair instead if 1gig is a problem.. wusy, what's your experience with RAM in the "1gig = bad stability" context? hmmm.

thanks for any info you can give, even if it's "dude your computer is soooooo messed up, i have NO idea what's going on"

 

[Crashman]

A lot of RAM gets a bit unstable in dual channel mode, you might be able to stabilize it by raising vDIMM to around 2.6-2.7v.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Ris3n_Da3mon]

couldn't that theoretically damage my RAM though? (have to admit i don't know much about overclocking with RAM, and/voltages for that matter, when it comes to RAM at least).

and back to the SATA, the stop 04 messages stopped now that i'm at 512 single channel.. but i still have a 30+ second lag before the "Windows XP Pro" boot logo comes up from when it says Verifying DMI Pool Data...

is that just because it's being a fuckerguy and having to "find" my SATA drive, or what? hmmmm...


EDIT: i've heard i should use memtest86 v3.0 to test RAM stability after , say, changes in voltage and whatnot. so <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Ris3n_Da3mon on 11/09/03 08:22 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

No, I don't think 2.6-2.7v will damage your RAM, and yes, I think the delay in bootup is probably caused by your SATA controller doing a drive search.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Ris3n_Da3mon]

and there's probably no way to get rid of that annoying time because of SATA. awwww shucks. I should've gone with the wd2500 or something like that, non-SATA. ah well.

 

[advent]

I also experienced such problems with an a7n8x deluxe v1.4 (BIOS 1007) together with a highpoint rocketraid 1640 adapter and an adaptec 29160 SCSI adapter. I found that the PC wouldn't boot from the SCSI drive (stuck on "Verifying DMI pool data") and would take a very long time to boot from floppy. I switched back to BIOS 1004 and everything went smoothly then. (All this with BIOS rev 2.02s of the highpoint adapter, because I couldn't boot in any circumstance with BIOS rev 2.01).

I also found that resetting CMOS+ESCD (when flashing a bios with awdflash) could sometimes solve boot issues, even when flashing exactly the same BIOS revision .