Various boot problems - possible hardware issues

  • Thread starter Thread starter RZ
  • Start date Start date
R

RZ

Recently i noticed that windows is apparently not
recognizing all of my installed ram. I have 3 256mb
sticks, but it appears to only recognize 2 of them. I've
ignored this for several months since everything has been
working fine. Yesterday several problems started with my
PC. First, upon rebooting i get a msg that says "NTLDR
is missing". At this point windows will not boot and my
only option is ctrl-alt-del. i do this several times
with the same result. Next i look to a hardware problem
and start by pulling ram sticks one at a time. Pull one
stick same result. Pull a second stick and i boot.
Great.

But now i want to know which stick is bad so i boot the
pc successfully with each stick individually in slot 1 of
the mobo. I find this odd, but who knows with
windows. I reinstall all 3 sticks again and now the
monitor will not come out of sleep mode even though it
appears the machine is booting (although since the screen
is black I can't be certain. I go back to 1 stick of ram
which worked when i tried them individually a few steps
ago. Monitor still not coming out of sleep mode.

Next i look to a video card problem. Pull the card out
of the AGP port and reinstall it. Windows boots. I
reinstall all 3 sticks of ram and Windows boots, yet only
recognizes 1 of them. It's appears that its either the
video card or the AGP slot that is bad. Or perhaps the
card is not making good contact with the AGP slot or vice-
versa. Is the next best step to buy a new vid card and
test the result? I hate to think its the mobo, although
it is two and a half years old. I'm dreading the thought
of having to remove everything from the case and
reinstalling everything on a new mobo.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I'm
running an ABIT KR-7A Raid mobo with XP Pro and a Geforce
3 video card and i'm hoping to not upgrade anything for
another 6 months or so.
 
It sound like a problem with the connections between the memory and the
motherboard. When I was building my computer I pulled memory in and out and
finally I was about to give up it started working. I however noticed that
it was only recognizing 64 MB and I had 512 MB. I went into my bios and
noticed there was a turbo mode. When I enabled the turbo mode all memory was
suddenly recognized.
I noticed that when I was installing the memory I could move the stick
around slightly so it wasn't fitting snuggly. As long as I got it working I
left it alone.
 
Thanks. It looks like my problem is a couple of bad
memory slots on the mobo. i've got 512mb working now and
that's enough to get me by.
 
Well, its running again. I think i've nailed down the
problem to ram slots #3 and #4. After trying about 42
different combinations with 1, 2 and all 3 sticks I was
never able to succesfully boot with ram in slots 3 and 4
of the mobo.

I guess i'll live with my 512mb until its time to build a
new rig. I think I'll wait for PCI Express and new video
cards.

Thanks for the suggestions. Sometimes pc's can be so
frustrating...
 
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