A8V Deluxe Unstable After Memory Upgrade

Hello,

First, my system:

MB: A8V Deluxe
PSU: Corsair HX520W (Originally had Antec SL400 ATX 400W)
CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Memory: Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2PT (Originally CMX512-3200C2 x2)
Video: Asus N6600/TD/128
HDD: WDC WD1200JB (x2), WDC WD400BB
DVD/CD: NEC DVD_RW ND-3500AW, TDK CDWR5200B

The system has Windows XP X64 on one WD1200JB and Fedora FC5 x64 on the
WD400BB, both on the main IDE connector. I added the 2nd WD1200JB to the
Promise RAID (onfigured as a single disk striped array, the only
configuration supported by the x64 driver) and installed Vista Ultimate
x64 on this drive.

Everything seemed stable until I replaced the original memory with the
TWINX2048-3200C2PT. Then data errors started showing up in files under
Vista. Every error I could track down turned out to be a picked low
order bit. In cases where there were multiple errors in a file, the low
order bits of the offset to the error are the same.

This sure looked like a memory problem, so I ran memtest86+. I've run it
for up to 16 hours at a time and it's never found a single error.

The Corsair Ram Guy said that he thought that the Antec PSU, with only a
single 12v rail, is marginal for this system, so I upgraded to the
HX520W, which has three 12v rails. I also upgraded to BIOS 1018-001.
Some things that were failing before started to work at this point, but
I was still seeing file errors. In one case, a file that had a bad MD5
checksum as computed on Vista had a good MD5 checksum as computed on XP.

I tried swapping the DIMMS - i.e. putting the DIMM that was in slot 1 in
slot 3 and visa versa. This didn't seem to make any difference either.

I thought perhaps the problem was with the RAID driver, since there's
only an old beta version available on the ASUS download site. To test
this, I disconnect the XP drive and moved the Vista drive from the RAID
to the main IDE connector. I reformatted and installed Vista on this
drive. The first time it died during the first reboot with a file
corruption error in fltmgr.sys. (Error 0x00000221?) I took this as a
sign that there was still a problem somewhere.

I reformatted and installed again and this time it completed without
complaining. On the first login Windows Update complained that some
updates failed due to error 800736CC, which is a corrupted download
file. Not a good sign...

I tried copying some files from my laptop to Vista, and got bad MD5
checksums. I wondered if maybe the drive was bad, so on my laptop I
burned the test files to a DVD verified the MD5 checksums. On Vista, I
checked the MD5 checksums right off the DVD and they were bad.

Now I don't know what to think... I've eliminated the RAID as the
problem and probably the drive itself, the network interface and the DVD
drive.

(It's possible that my Vista DVD is bad - I got as a reward for being a
Vista beta tester and burned it myself (on the NEC drive) from an ISO I
downloaded. I used the MS CRC tool to verify the download and to verify
the burned copy, so at least it *was* good.)

Does anybody have any ideas for what else to check? I'm wondering if
it's time to retire this mobo and start over...

Regards,
Eric Mader

Had the same problem, needed to set latency from 2-3-3-6 to 2.5-3-3-6.


"Eric Mader" <emader.TakeThisOut@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:462fa56f$0$1388$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> Hello,
>
> First, my system:
>
> MB: A8V Deluxe
> PSU: Corsair HX520W (Originally had Antec SL400 ATX 400W)
> CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4200+
> Memory: Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2PT (Originally CMX512-3200C2 x2)
> Video: Asus N6600/TD/128
> HDD: WDC WD1200JB (x2), WDC WD400BB
> DVD/CD: NEC DVD_RW ND-3500AW, TDK CDWR5200B
>
> The system has Windows XP X64 on one WD1200JB and Fedora FC5 x64 on the
> WD400BB, both on the main IDE connector. I added the 2nd WD1200JB to the
> Promise RAID (onfigured as a single disk striped array, the only
> configuration supported by the x64 driver) and installed Vista Ultimate
> x64 on this drive.
>
> Everything seemed stable until I replaced the original memory with the
> TWINX2048-3200C2PT. Then data errors started showing up in files under
> Vista. Every error I could track down turned out to be a picked low order
> bit. In cases where there were multiple errors in a file, the low order
> bits of the offset to the error are the same.
>
> This sure looked like a memory problem, so I ran memtest86+. I've run it
> for up to 16 hours at a time and it's never found a single error.
>
> The Corsair Ram Guy said that he thought that the Antec PSU, with only a
> single 12v rail, is marginal for this system, so I upgraded to the HX520W,
> which has three 12v rails. I also upgraded to BIOS 1018-001. Some things
> that were failing before started to work at this point, but I was still
> seeing file errors. In one case, a file that had a bad MD5 checksum as
> computed on Vista had a good MD5 checksum as computed on XP.
>
> I tried swapping the DIMMS - i.e. putting the DIMM that was in slot 1 in
> slot 3 and visa versa. This didn't seem to make any difference either.
>
> I thought perhaps the problem was with the RAID driver, since there's only
> an old beta version available on the ASUS download site. To test this, I
> disconnect the XP drive and moved the Vista drive from the RAID to the
> main IDE connector. I reformatted and installed Vista on this drive. The
> first time it died during the first reboot with a file corruption error in
> fltmgr.sys. (Error 0x00000221?) I took this as a sign that there was still
> a problem somewhere.
>
> I reformatted and installed again and this time it completed without
> complaining. On the first login Windows Update complained that some
> updates failed due to error 800736CC, which is a corrupted download file.
> Not a good sign...
>
> I tried copying some files from my laptop to Vista, and got bad MD5
> checksums. I wondered if maybe the drive was bad, so on my laptop I burned
> the test files to a DVD verified the MD5 checksums. On Vista, I checked
> the MD5 checksums right off the DVD and they were bad.
>
> Now I don't know what to think... I've eliminated the RAID as the problem
> and probably the drive itself, the network interface and the DVD drive.
>
> (It's possible that my Vista DVD is bad - I got as a reward for being a
> Vista beta tester and burned it myself (on the NEC drive) from an ISO I
> downloaded. I used the MS CRC tool to verify the download and to verify
> the burned copy, so at least it *was* good.)
>
> Does anybody have any ideas for what else to check? I'm wondering if it's
> time to retire this mobo and start over...
>
> Regards,
> Eric Mader
>