I took the memory stick out of the secondary slot, fired up my computer, tried my crashing trick… nothing! Hallelujah!
Then I swapped the memory sticks, and tried again - still no crash!
So I put the other stick back in, so that now they were in their opposite positions from the original. Tried to make my computer crash, and succeeded. Before, all I had to do was fire up the NWN Toolset, let it run for 30 seconds or so, then try to bring up Options to get a crash; this time it didn’t crash until I brought up the options three times.
So I took the secondary stick back out, and I’ve been screwing with the computer trying to get it to crash… nothin’. It’s running beautifully - but with only 2GB of RAM.
So what the hell does this mean? The actual RAM slot in my mobo is bad? I did blow a bit of compressed air towards the slot before I put the secondary stick back in… maybe I didn’t do a good enough job, and it’s just dust? AAARRRGGH!
Ram needs to be ‘matched’ in order to do some kinds of ram speed tricks. Also some MB’s dont like some brands of ram.
Could be that your ram sticks arent similar enough to each other. Some options to try would be turning off ‘dual channel’ in your BIOS, or trying different slots in your MB if possible.
Ie if you have them in 1 and 3, try 2 and 4 or 1 and 3. The slowdown will be negligible and could be enough to make things work. Next option would be a new matched pair of ram its pretty cheap. Another is to try tweaking your ram voltage by .1 or so, if its possible, Intel tend to be pretty conservative BIOS.
If that doesnt work then yes your MB could be a bit wonky, but Id be surprised given its Intel.
My RAM sticks are matched. They’re Patriot, DDR3 1333 MHz 9-9-9-24, model# PDC34G1333ELK
I didn’t think I could put them in different slots. Just to be sure I have this straight, if I try putting them in slots 1 and 2, I need to have dual-channel off, correct? And thus, the result would be my machine would be looking at my RAM as two 2GB sticks, rather than one 4GB stick?
They can be matched in theory, but not be matched in practise. Ie each stick works fine separately, but are just different enough in timing to cause problems when used together. Matching is supposed to prevent this, so you’ve just had bad luck. If you can return the sticks, another pair might work fine in dual channel.
If you put them in one and two dual channel should go off automatically, it usually uses the slot positions to decide whether to enable it or not. Your MB guide seems to say its fine to use different slots as long as one stick is in slot 1 (A Dimm 0).
It wont be looking at them as separate sticks, it just changes the way it uses the memory.
For normal tasks the benefit is usually tiny, and it sure beats crashing.
I see what you mean. Now that I think about it, I bought them together, but they weren’t packaged together, it was me saying “I’ll take two of those.”
It’s been almost a year, so I don’t think I can take them back at this point. Even if I could, I bought them at Fry’s… I’d rather spend eternity in Hell than make a return there.
I’m gonna put that other stick back in tomorrow and see what happens. Thanks for your help!
Tried putting my RAM in slots 1 and 2. The BIOS states I’ve got 4GB, in Single Channel Mode. But Windows fails to start. I get to the “Windows failed to start” screen, and when I select “Start Windows Normally”… nothing happens. I tried swapping the sticks, no go.
Then I tried slots 1 and 4, and I’m back in Dual-Channel mode. System starts up, and crashes like before.
I do not get the option to set the memory mode manually in my BIOS.
I suppose I could try increasing the voltage or playing with the timings… but quite frankly, after screwing around with this for the last week, I’ve had it. My system is finally working correctly, and I’m really not noticing much of a slowdown only having 2GB of RAM. So until I do start noticing and it makes me nuts, I’m gonna lay off of this.
A fewBad sectors? A healthy drive has zero bad sectors or one or twobad ones from the factory. A few means they Are increasing. Getyourself a new drive
