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STORY: Weird memory behaviour after hardware upgrades!


Menion

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Hello!

About 3 days ago I bought some new hardware for my computer...

Athlon64 3200+

GeForce 7600GT

MSI-motherboard SLI-ready

Because I already have 2 x 512MB memory modules and the motherboard supported them,

I decided to wait with memory upgrades until I really needed it.

Well... This proved to be a bad decision, and a pain in the arse! Here goes:

First off, I reformat and installed Windows XP Professional (32bit), everything goes smooth; without a glitch. After installation is finished I install all the latest drivers and a couple of games to try out my new rig that supposedly would be mindblowing compared to my old one.

Now it gets interesting... Every game hung the whole computer after a couple of minutes.

Oblivion even hung the computer as soon as 3D-graphics were displayed, some other games could run longer but eventually hung as well. And after I was forced to do a hard reboot, a second problem appears; bios freeze during post, right after the cpu-info was shown... This motherboard have some diods that show bios posting status, but according to the manual they didn't show any error at all?! Uhm... :blink:

Took some time for me to solve the bios posting problem, it's hilarious, but it had to do with my ipod being plugged into the usb. Something made the bios hang when looking for usb keyboard, and found ipod instead. Unplugging ipod, solved the bios freeze, and the computer posted as normal.

Now to the first problem again, computer still hangs up in games and programs using 3d-accelerated graphics. First I thought it had to do with the graphic drivers, so I tried a couple of other drivers, but still no luck. Then I thought it might have to do with the graphic card itself... Now I noticed I got bluescreen and not always freeze... The bluescreen would show an error message I haven't seen in many years, basically "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" :o

WHAT?! IRQ conflicts in Windows XP?! I've never experienced that before! So, I disabled all controllers (in bios) and devices I didn't use to free up some IRQ-adresses, but still get bsod or just plain freeze. What the heck? After a couple of hours of testing I decided to troubleshoot the hardware once again. This time I took out one of the memory modules... Guess what?! No bsod! No freeze! Woohoo! Finally... But this means I only got 512MB, which will not be even close to what I need for the games I want to play, and would result in HDD swapping madness! Anyway, to be sure the memory module was damaged I installed it into my other computer, and it worked like a charm! What is this?! :blink:

After reformatting again, and installing Windows XP Pro 64-bit, I wanted to give the failing memory module another chance; just to get bsod and freeze again! :realmad: Just to spice things up, as a last resort, I did the opposite what the manual said... These memory modules are not identical and should not be run in dual channel mode, but what the heck, doesn't hurt to try?... God bless curiosity! IT WORKS! No bsod, no freeze... And I even run them in dual channel mode, which means more memory bandwidth!!! So, finally after many hours and even days of testing I can play all the games I want without crashing!

I must say that this problem, and not to mention the solution, is illogical, and I can't find any explaination for why it's working in dual channel mode and not in single channel mode, even if the modules aren't identical. :wacko: I guess earth is flat, after all!

Just wanted to share this story, I think it's kinda fun! Maybe some of you have been struggleing through a similar hell!

Best regards,

Menion

Edited by Menion
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Just to spice things up, as a last resort, I did the opposite what the manual said... These memory modules are not identical and should not be run in dual channel mode, but what the heck, doesn't hurt to try?... God bless curiosity! IT WORKS! No bsod, no freeze... And I even run them in dual channel mode, which means more memory bandwidth!!! So, finally after many hours and even days of testing I can play all the games I want without crashing!
Your BIOS has the dual and single-channel mode reversed. When it said "single channel", it was actually running in dual channel, and when it says "dual channel" it's actually in single-channel mode. A small error on the part of the programmer. Edited by LLXX
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"DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" "WHAT?! IRQ conflicts in Windows XP?! I've never experienced that before! "

Agnitum Outpost firewall is notorious for this kind of stuff on certain xp boxes.

Edited by George27
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"DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" "WHAT?! IRQ conflicts in Windows XP?! I've never experienced that before! "

Agnitum Outpost firewall is notorious for this kind of stuff on certain xp boxes.

Haha ok! Luckily I've never used it and probably never will... I got nVIDIA firewall instead ;)

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haha! nvidia firewall may be the problem, its is very bugged.

Hmm.. I don't use it ;) never chose to install the drivers for it...

I'm on NAT and have chosen to forward some custom ports to my internal IP, so it's not really needed...

So if any hardcore hacker want to break in, I don't mind :) I don't have anything of value anyway!

"STOP: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" BSODs in your case are likely to be caused by crappy processor chip steppings.

Even more so if OC'ing your processor.

Less likely to be the RAM's fault.

How do you know it doesn't show up when RAM is faulting? In my case it did.. Not always, but sometimes... I also got this error when I was OC:ing my GPU as well, but then it pointed to the nvidia-driver so It was pretty easy to understand why it happened.

http://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.html

There it says that mostly it's the CPU, but secondly RAM, so I guess you're wrong ;D

Regards,

Menion

Edited by Menion
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LoL :P

Message "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" isn't enough to determine which hardware or what settings caused the problem, every hardware problem or misconfigured settings can lead to that message.

Even a high-skilled Microsoft technician wouldn't be able to answer to "What's causing the problem?" on the phone, if You only gave him that message for the problem indication :D

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