I recently replaced a busted motherboard with a brand new one (gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P.) I was told that it has a similar enough chipset to my old motherboard that I didn’t need to worry about reinstalling Windows (Vista Home Premium 64.) (The old board was a GA-P35-GQ6.)
When I boot up, I get one short beep (indicating a successful boot) and the BIOS splash screen. I cannot get into the BIOS, nor will it boot any further. I originally had my three hard drives and DVD drive plugged in. I unplugged those and I get the same thing. I have tried two different keyboards, one USB and the other PS2. The PS2 one gets power (lights come on, num lock will cycle on and off) but I still can’t get into the BIOS. The splash screen will stay up for twenty seconds or so, then reboot, go black, and about thirty seconds later the splash screen shows up again. I have nothing plugged in but the CPU, RAM, the video card, power switch and power LED, and the keyboard.
It’s frustrating that it SEEMS to be working fine, but one little thing isn’t letting me continue.
Double check your power connectors. Make sure you have both the main 24 pin connector and the other 6 pin power connector (should be near the CPU). Also make sure your RAM and CPU are seated properly.
My knowledge may be a bit out of date - I changed careers from being a computer guy about 6 years ago, but I keep my hand in as a hobbyist - but it sounds like a RAM issue to me. Either the RAM is not compatible with the new MB or one of your sticks was damaged during the transfer process.
On my current computer I upgraded the RAM with two new 1GB sticks. One of the sticks was bad and gave similar symptoms.
Ok, RAM kind of makes sense…I added a couple sticks (went from 2 Gigs to 6 Gigs.) It’s the same brand and model, just more, even the same latency, so I figured it was ok.
I removed the two new sticks, and now I get an even worse problem! I get nothing but lots of short beeps, which the manual says is a power error. I figured I nudged a connector somewhere, so I unplugged and plugged them all back in, and I get the same.
Ok, removed the old sticks, and just used the new sticks, and problem solved! Maybe the old sticks got fried when the old mobo got fried…or it was just the RAM all along and I needlessly bought a mobo…:mad:
Forgive me if this is obvious to you, but if your MB has dual channel architecture, then if you fill up adjacent slots on your MB, the MB switches to dual channel mode and all memory has to be paired with identical sticks (identical within each pair). Not properly populating the slots leads to… unexpected results. So, you could have had similar problems with memory that was all fine, but just not put into the proper slots.
I doubt that was your problem though - I thought this was causing my problem when I upgraded the RAM on my PC, but as it turned out it was a bad stick.
Okay, I looked up your new MB, and it seems my advice above might lead you astray. On your MB the pairs for dual channel are alternating. It’s just important that you have identical sticks in the same colored slots.
Ahh, that might have been the problem. I had the two old sticks in slots close to each other (ie, one red colored and one yellow,) and the two new ones in the other two (also one red and one yellow.)
So maybe if I match them up to color everything will be alright? I mean…everything is fine now, but I’d like to use more RAM. But since it didn’t boot at all with just the old sticks in there, this seems unlikely.
But for the record, the RAM is the exact same brand and model, even the same latency timings, one is just 2 sticks of 2 GB each and the old was 2 sticks of 1 GB each.
This can be a little laborious but you can try testing for boot with each individual stick, sometimes one bad stick will give your motherboard a fit. If one does not boot you probably have your problem. If they do will it boot with just the new sticks and not the old?
There has to be some combination that will do it for you. If not you may have some other more exotic ram conflict.
No, the new RAM. And since it’s all up and running, and the case is even oput back together, I’m just saying to Hell with it and only using the new RAM. It’s still more than I had before (4 GB vs 2) so it’s good enough.
Yes, try matching them so that the 2 2GB sticks are in one color of slot and the 2 1GB sticks are in the other color slots. It’s not supposed to screw up completely if you don’t match them identically, but my MB, which is also supposed to be somewhat tolerant, is in fact completely intolerant.
Try it and let us know if you get booted with all 6GB.
TBH, if your new RAM is 4 Gb, and you’re using Windows, the 2 additional Gigs of RAM won’t do squat anyway : up to XP (dunno about Vista though), Windows can’t handle more than 3 Gigs and a half of RAM. More than that, the OS doesn’t see/use anyway. Enjoy your smoking new rig
This is only true of the 32-bit versions of Windows; they’re restricted to a 4GB address space, which limits the amount of physical RAM that can be mapped. The 64-bit version of Vista (which bouv listed in the OP) has no problem seeing and addressing upwards of 4GB of memory, depending on the flavor – Home Premium supports up to 8GB, while Business edition and up support 128GB. (Not that any contemporary consumer motherboards support that many DIMMs… :p)
