davidsansome42
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Did a new SDRAM stick kill 2 motherboards?
I installed a cheap 512MB SDRAM stick into my computer alongside an old 256MB one, and on the first boot the BIOS only reported finding 512MB of RAM - not the 768MB as expected. I assumed that the old stick was slower, and it was only using the faster one. Booting into Windows XP failed - nothing happened after the Windows XP logo screen - everything went blank. Booting into safe mode worked fine, and so did booting Linux. I assumed this was just Windows being stupid, so I tried removing my old 256 ram stick (thinking it was conflicting).
From this point onwards, not even the BIOS screen would come up. The hard drives and CD rom drives would spin up, the fans would come on, the hard drive light would come on (solidly - not flickering), but there were no beeps, and wasn't anything on the screen.
I tested all the components in the other computer - monitor, video card, hard drives, etc. so I thought the motherboard must have died.
£60 later, I installed a new motherboard, and the troublesome 512MB ram stick. Exactly the same thing happened - no beeps or anything. Putting the old 256MB chip back in didn't work either. I then suspected the CPU...
£50 later, with a new CPU installed, still with the new motherboard and 512MB ram stick - same problem - nothing on screen, no beeps.
Is it possible that this SDRAM stick could have destroyed 2 of my motherboards, or am I missing something painfully obvious?
From this point onwards, not even the BIOS screen would come up. The hard drives and CD rom drives would spin up, the fans would come on, the hard drive light would come on (solidly - not flickering), but there were no beeps, and wasn't anything on the screen.
I tested all the components in the other computer - monitor, video card, hard drives, etc. so I thought the motherboard must have died.
£60 later, I installed a new motherboard, and the troublesome 512MB ram stick. Exactly the same thing happened - no beeps or anything. Putting the old 256MB chip back in didn't work either. I then suspected the CPU...
£50 later, with a new CPU installed, still with the new motherboard and 512MB ram stick - same problem - nothing on screen, no beeps.
Is it possible that this SDRAM stick could have destroyed 2 of my motherboards, or am I missing something painfully obvious?
Some mother boards have a BIOS reset jumper. If so use it instead of pulling the battery.
Replace or test your power supply. I think it has died.
ASKER
CrazyOne - I've just tried the reset jumper, and it still doesn't work :-(
Snowguy - The power supply is fine, as all the drives spin up, and the fan and hd light comes on.
Snowguy - The power supply is fine, as all the drives spin up, and the fan and hd light comes on.
It could still be the power supply did you check all voltages? The fans run on 12v the power supply has 3 voltages 12v 5v and 3.3v. If you loose the 5.5v or 3.3v it can still act as if it is powering up. What happens is you don't get power to ram vga or cpu. this is why when the PSU dies you usualy dont get any post warning beeps or video.
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Check if you're running an Intel 810 or 815 chipset, as neither will support over 512mb of ram. I've never gone above this limit on these particular chipsets, so I couldn't tell you what would happen, but your issues could easily be caused by such a limitation.
Backing this system down to a bare bones system should have helped in the troubleshooting, if not shown where the problem was.
Usually not but...
Have you tried resetting the BIOS by pulling the battery from the mother board for about 30mins to an hour?