Faulty DIMM?

  • Thread starter Thread starter MoxieMouse
  • Start date Start date
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MoxieMouse

Has anyone experienced there PC just shutting off, due to a faulty DIMM? I
have narrowed my problem down to a DIMM Slot and it seems to be when there
is RAM in that slot, it shuts off, with no RAM it stays running, but no
warning beeps, I have tried 3 New Sticks of RAM and all do the same, if I
leave that slot open, there is no problem, is this time for a New
Motherboard?. or has this happened to anyone else? who found it was there
DIMM slot..

Thanks for any advice/help

Rob
 
Yes, I've seen it happen a few times. There are a couple causes, but it
doesn't matter since there's no way to correct the problem short of
replacing the motherboard.


Has anyone experienced there PC just shutting off, due to a faulty DIMM? I
have narrowed my problem down to a DIMM Slot and it seems to be when there
is RAM in that slot, it shuts off, with no RAM it stays running, but no
warning beeps, I have tried 3 New Sticks of RAM and all do the same, if I
leave that slot open, there is no problem, is this time for a New
Motherboard?. or has this happened to anyone else? who found it was there
DIMM slot..

Thanks for any advice/help

Rob
 
What changes have you made to the computer internally in the previous days
before the dimm slot started acting up?
 
No Changes at all XU, just started some weeks back, thought it was my Power
Supply, changed it, still did it, thought possibly a Video Card, because of
the way things were acting changed it, still did it, so my last guess was
the DIMM slot... so I have some reason to believe it maybe that, as well as
"Ericks" reply, I just wasn't sure if this was a common or rare problem, if
a problem at all..

I ran MEMtest86 and it shut down about 25 - 30 min. into it, now it seems to
do it more when I play Madden 2006, but I am sure it still goes back to the
problem of the DIMM, I assume because of the High Graphics and game, it may
strain my Mem even more, and being a (PC3200) 400Mhz Ram, I shouldn't have a
problem..

Thanks, for everyone's help, this is/was really frustating
Rob
 
Sounds like a driver problem to me if your computer is running for a while.
You would think if you had a bad dimm the thing would not boot up at all or
would not show any memory at all present in that dimm.

But are you using Windows? If so, have you gone into the Event Viewer under
System and under the Application tabs to see if any errors are present?

----- Original Message -----
From: "MoxieMouse" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 11:38 PM
Subject: Re: Faulty DIMM?
 
I am using Windows Xp, just checked out my event viewer and nothing points
to an error at the times it shut down at, its almost as if the RAM is being
put under stress and can't handle it, but I will try a few things before I
goto a new Board, if I can't get it going, I am going to assume, with things
pointing that way, chances are, its the Board...

Thanks Once Again

Rob
 
When's the last time you reformatted? Try that again before you go on to a
new board. When you reformat, don't install any of the MS updates or any
other programs before you play your games for a while to see if the comp
still shuts down. Might as well try this if you are going to buy a new board
anyway.
 
No, don't reformat just yet. It is possible that the slot has failed. It
does happen. The fact that you've tried several sticks of RAM in the slot
and the system does nto work, yet works without any RAM in the slot confirms
the problem.


When's the last time you reformatted? Try that again before you go on to a
new board. When you reformat, don't install any of the MS updates or any
other programs before you play your games for a while to see if the comp
still shuts down. Might as well try this if you are going to buy a new board
anyway.
 
But he said he was getting a new MOBO, so why would he not go ahead and
reformat now? When he puts in that new mobo he is going to have to install
everything all over again anyway. He might as well try to see if the
reformat will fix the problem before he buys the new mobo.

Also, I would uplug all your pci devices and run the computer to see if you
still have that problem. I had to take out a modem from a pci slot in my
older computer because it was confusing the computer and would not boot up
with both ram slots occupied with the ram modules. There was an onboard
modem causing a conflict. This is a long shot, especially since you said you
did nothing to the inside of the computer before the problem started, but
you ought to try these steps if you are serious about getting a new mobo.
 
But he said he was getting a new MOBO, so why would he not go ahead and
reformat now? When he puts in that new mobo he is going to have to install
everything all over again anyway. He might as well try to see if the
reformat will fix the problem before he buys the new mobo.
Click to expand...

No, it's not necessarily true that one must reformat for a
new board, but installing a temporary multi-boot 2nd os to
test the current parts might still be a good idea.
 
MoxieMouse said:
Has anyone experienced there PC just shutting off, due to a faulty DIMM? I
have narrowed my problem down to a DIMM Slot and it seems to be when there
is RAM in that slot, it shuts off, with no RAM it stays running, but no
warning beeps, I have tried 3 New Sticks of RAM and all do the same, if I
leave that slot open, there is no problem, is this time for a New
Motherboard?. or has this happened to anyone else? who found it was there
DIMM slot..
Click to expand...

My PC has the same fault. I have 3 memory modules and I can use them in any
combination in the first two slots on my motherboard, but as soon as I start
to use the 3rd slot on the motherboard, the PC becomes very unstable. I also
have changed nothing in my PC, it just started to crash more and more often,
until I was forced into investigating the problem. It will crash on average,
once a day if I use the 3rd DIMM slot on the motherboard, so I don't use
that slot any more and the PC has been stable for months!

Motherboard - Soltek SL75-DRV5.
 
Erick said:
You're problem soudns a bit different actually. Is the third slot
separated
from the other two? If so, you have a board with dual-channel capability.
To
run in dual channel, you put a stick of RAM in only the 2nd and 3rd slots.
For single channel, only slots 1 and 2. A lot of those boards did not have
the capability of runnign RAM in all 3 slots.
Click to expand...

To be honest, I don't know if the motherboard has dial-channel capability.
All I know is that it worked perfectly for about a year, then started
crashing more and more often until I was forced to investigate and found the
3rd memory slot to be the problem. All 3 memory slots are together with no
different spacing and no different colouring. As far as I know all 3 slots
are the same and all take up to 1GB RAM each.
 
GT said:
To be honest, I don't know if the motherboard has dial-channel capability.
All I know is that it worked perfectly for about a year, then started
crashing more and more often until I was forced to investigate and found
the 3rd memory slot to be the problem. All 3 memory slots are together
with no different spacing and no different colouring. As far as I know all
3 slots are the same and all take up to 1GB RAM each.
Click to expand...

Here's a picture of the board - you can see the 3 RAM slots are together
with no separation. The board definitely takes RAM in all 3 slots at the
same time and up to 3GB. I ran with 1GB in slot 1 and 2x512MBs in slots 2
and 3 for ages without problems.
 
GT said:
To be honest, I don't know if the motherboard has dial-channel capability.
All I know is that it worked perfectly for about a year, then started
crashing more and more often until I was forced to investigate and found
the 3rd memory slot to be the problem. All 3 memory slots are together
with no different spacing and no different colouring. As far as I know all
3 slots are the same and all take up to 1GB RAM each.
Click to expand...

http://www.extremeoverclocking.net/cebit/Soltek_SL75_DRV5.jpg
 
To be honest, I don't know if the motherboard has dial-channel capability.
Click to expand...

It appears to be KT333 chipset based, so it would not be
dual-channel capable.

All I know is that it worked perfectly for about a year, then started
crashing more and more often until I was forced to investigate and found the
3rd memory slot to be the problem. All 3 memory slots are together with no
different spacing and no different colouring. As far as I know all 3 slots
are the same and all take up to 1GB RAM each.
Click to expand...

You might have been lucky, typically KT333 based boards
start to get instable if more than 2 memory modules are used
(more than 256MB each) and/or if running at 166MHz/DDR333
memory bus speed.

It's a fairly safe bet that you couldnt' run 3 x 1GB modules
in your board at 166MHz mem bus speed, except possibly if
you raised (slowed down) memory timings quite a bit, if the
board allowed it.
 
kony said:
It appears to be KT333 chipset based, so it would not be
dual-channel capable.



You might have been lucky, typically KT333 based boards
start to get instable if more than 2 memory modules are used
(more than 256MB each) and/or if running at 166MHz/DDR333
memory bus speed.

It's a fairly safe bet that you couldnt' run 3 x 1GB modules
in your board at 166MHz mem bus speed, except possibly if
you raised (slowed down) memory timings quite a bit, if the
board allowed it.
Click to expand...

It was stable for about a year (maybe longer - time flies!) with 3 memory
modules. 1GB in slot 1 and two 512MBs in slot 2 and 3. All DDR333 running at
166MHz. CL2.5. The crashing started gradually as if something was slowly
failing, but the memory is OK as either 512MB dimm works perfectly in slot 2
now, but inserting either into slot 3 causes instability. I am just running
with 1.5GB instead of the full 2GB I was used to. I do some photo and
multimedia work and have virtual memory disabled for speed so the more RAM I
can get, the better!
 
It was stable for about a year (maybe longer - time flies!) with 3 memory
modules. 1GB in slot 1 and two 512MBs in slot 2 and 3. All DDR333 running at
166MHz. CL2.5. The crashing started gradually as if something was slowly
failing, but the memory is OK as either 512MB dimm works perfectly in slot 2
now, but inserting either into slot 3 causes instability. I am just running
with 1.5GB instead of the full 2GB I was used to. I do some photo and
multimedia work and have virtual memory disabled for speed so the more RAM I
can get, the better!
Click to expand...

You may have been lucky that it was barely stable to begin
with but such thin margin that now given the board has aged,
capacitors and contacts, perhaps PSU too, that the initial
ideal operation has degraded a little bit.

All you can do is look at what has changed, perhaps cleaning
memory contacts and slot contacts, and if you had changed
bios version or settings since original config of that
memory you might look at those changes and undo them.

Failing anything else, you might consider a different
motherboard, nForce2 typically had a much better stability
at 166MHz than KT333 did.
 
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