Vista - Asus A7N8X and 3GB

hello everyone,

I've just upgraded my WindowsXP to Vista. For the installation I had to
remove one of my three memory sticks allready, because the Vista CD wouldn't
boot with all three installed the sophisticated green activity indicator
would just stop at some point. Now, after the upgrade the same applies to the
installed Vista System. It doesn't boot with 3 GB. No error message most of
the time, that is in one of ten times I get a STOP (0x000000C5) bluescreen.

My System:
Board: A7N8X Deluxe 2.0
CPU: AMD AthlonXP 3000+
RAM: 3 X G.SKILL PC3200 1GBNS
Grafik: Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512MB

What I've done so far:
1) Power supply is sufficient.
2) Memory sticks tested and ok.
3) Bios is up to date
4) Both Windows XP and Linux work fine with 3GB
5) there are to updates for Vista available, that would fit
KB925528
KB929777
However, both should be included in SP1 (which is installed) and none can be
installed manually (Message is something like: 'The update is not valid for
your system').

I am aware of the fact, that my board is quite old, but overall my setup
should be sufficient to run Vista decently. I've seen a couple of users with
this problem, but no solution so far.

After a bit of research, my guess is that windows vista probably stops
driver loading as a prepercussion because the chipset drivers for nForce2 are
not fully supported and therefore something might go wrong. Is that at least
near to the truth?
If so, just for testing, is there a way to make vista a bit more brave?

Or just restrict memory adress space for drivers to the lower (obviously
less suspicious) 1 GB or 2 GB? (other than 'BCDEdit /set RemoveMemory 1024',
which is what I've currently set to boot Vista without having to remove 1
stick)

Thanks alot in advance
Sascha

Your M/B (I have 3 of them) will not work with more than 2 slots populated
in dual RAM mode. So, I also live with only 2 gig of RAM to use.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"Sascha Kolberg" <SaschaKolberg@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2E6B9D60-1D65-48AA-BA66-0ACE18CC2BAD@xxxxxx

Thanks for all the help!

I think I've tried everything possible and I think DirectX 10 (which was my
original motivation) is certainly not worth all that trouble. I'm going to
reinstall Windows XP which worked great with all 3 sticks. May be, the day
will come when DirectX 10 will be available for XP, maybe not.
I'm just a bit sad, that parts of my hardware are to old for current windows
systems (yes I tried windows 7 Beta ), while other parts are to new to be
fully supported by windows xp. Thus, my choice is either 3 GB of RAM and only
DX9 or only 2 GB of RAM and DX 10.

Farewell Vista

Hi, i've got an a7n8x-e deluxe and i've got the same problem. things i've noticed though are: 3x512 pc3200 work fine on xp, vista and windows 7, 2x1gb pc3200 work fine on all systems. this is where it all starts getting fun with 3gb. xp installs fine, and runs fine as well, vista will not even boot off the dvd, install or run. windows 7 will boot off the dvd, install but once its done and booting for the first logging in screen it crashes. (all crashes are without bsod, first you know about it is the comp is posting again.) does this help anyone? what do you mean you cant run windows 7? i get wei scores of 4.0-4.5-5.9-6.0-6.2. (vista 4.0-4.5-5.9-5.9-5.9) windows 7 doesn't use as much resources as vista so 2gb of ram is better suited for it.

Hello Sascha, hello turbojo,

I have to apologize that I use this thread, I only want to run WinXP, but with the same Mobo as you and also with 3Gb. But there are only few people which run 3Gb at the A7n8x-e deluxe. I tried to insert 3x1024K MDT CL2.5 but XP didn't start. Unfortunately the Mobo itself doesn't recognize the 3Gb (only 2621440K). What's going wrong?

Thanks a lot in advance for help

IamHri

Suggest you look at Asus site for your specific mobo and see what memory
config is supported

"IamHri" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:1564da926622f81b8ac3cf7959452b86@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

According to the Asus website (the FAQ) you have to have the memory set at
the correct voltage.

quote:
The issue may be related to the voltage setting of your memory modules. The
standard operating voltages of DDR2 and DDR3 memory modules, as defined by
JEDEC, are 1.8V and 1.5V, respectively. However, some of the memory modules
require higher operating voltage than JEDEC's standards. In such case, the
memory may sometimes not be able to function properly without enough
voltage.

When you encounter instability issue, please first check the operating
voltage of your memory modules, and please manually set the memory voltage
accordingly in the BIOS.


--
Cari (MS-MVP) Printing & Imaging
www.coribright.com/windows

"IamHri" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:1564da926622f81b8ac3cf7959452b86@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Hello Cari,

I am afraid that your help wouldn't work, because the A7N8X .. runs only DDRam and not DDR2 or DDR3. I will try to increase the voltage from 2.5 to 2.6V. but I think it would not solve the problem.

best regards

Hello, Cari,

now it works. I had to reset the bios to system-default. At the next start the system recognized the 3GB Ram.

IamHri

I've had major problems trying to get a third stick of RAM to work in my nForce2 A7N8X V2.00. 2GB runs great, if I add in third 1GB stick to give 3GB total, things get unstable in XP. Vista and Win7 RC won't even boot, they'll just blue screen.

After a week of searching and experimenting, I finally got it stable in XP, still no luck with Vista or Win7 with this yet.

Here's what I found:

1 - You must set the AGP Apperature to 256MB for the BIOS to see the full 3GB. If you have it set to 512MB, the bios will only see 2.5GB. From what I've read, this is because the 32-bit address space isn't large enough for that 512MB AGP mapping.

2 - Now that the bios can see 3GB, next is getting XP to boot and be stable. I've seen everything from blue screens, to games just crashing to desktop and random reboots. All the research I found tended to point towards 200Mhz not being a stable FSB for three memory dimms. So this is where I had to sacrifice some cpu speed for the extra memory. I was running 200Mhz @ 12x = 2.4Ghz and that crashed all the time. Instead I now run 184 @ 12.5x = 2.3 Ghz and everything is stable.