Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Hi guys Just rebuilt my PC with the following bits Asus Crossfire Motherboard AMD X2 FX-62 CPU 4gb OCZ 8500 DDR2 2x 8800GTX It boots up fine and I can go into the bios so changed that to boot from cd, put in the Vista dvd and all I get is a black screen with a flashing _ in he top left hand side of the screen Any ideas would be good cause as you can tell I have just spent the odd £ or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvershark44 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 I would guess its a boot error. Have you checked the SPD timings on your ram? As they can default to incompatible timings sometimes on new systems. Especially with OCZ ram!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edd_t Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 had a problem when installing with 4gb ram. i removed 3gb, installed vista. added the ram back in, and off i went Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 Oh up date I now get "A disk read error occurred press ctrl + alt + del to restart" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edd_t Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 is your HDD in good condition? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvershark44 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Ok the more I look at your setup the more im sure its a ram issue. I would therefore check your memory timings, in advanced dram timings, and try setting your memory to run at 2T instead of one. Your memory controller might be topping out at 1T with 4 gig of ram. Almost 100% sure its that. Let me know if you dont understand a word of what ive just said lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 Ok changed it to T2 and I still get a black screen. HDD is fine well was working 2 hours ago before I changed pc's over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvershark44 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Ok changed it to T2 and I still get a black screen. HDD is fine well was working 2 hours ago before I changed pc's over. Ok have you checked the rest of your ram timings? standard should be quite high i would have thought. Like 4-4-4-12 or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvershark44 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 How many dimms (ram modules) are you using? 4 dimms? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 Got 4 moduels Not sure on timings as its all set to auto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 Ok think this may be the problem the ram is 8500 ram the mobo supports 800 ram does this mean the ram I have is too fast for the board? if so is there anyway of slowing it down like you could on DDR1 RAM?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvershark44 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Got 4 moduels Not sure on timings as its all set to auto Ok i think your memory controller is maxed out completely i would guess. This is becuase you are running very fast ram but in 4 modules not 2 and motherboards tend to hate that. You need to check what timings your motherboard is trying to run them, as on AUTO it may be pushing them too hard. Especially with 4 dimms. I hope you werent looking to overclock either, as I wouldnt say this setup has left much headroom for oc-ing. Say standard timings are 4-4-4-12 (dont know what they are btw just a guess) That is rated to a completely stable motherboard with just 2 dimms. As you are running 4 dimms, your memory controller is topping out. Only way to correct this is to either relax your memory timings, or increase voltage to CPU, RAM, Hypertransport, and mainboard. NOT BY MUCH, try 0.1 voltage incriments only to be safe. I would suggest you test that its your ram by removing 2 ram modules and see if you can get it to boot that way. If you can then defo a memory controller issue as described above. One last thing is, I assume you are using an Offical Vista CD, as i have seen loads of copied XP cds in the past that fail to boot from CD. Just dont work for some reason even though all the files are on there etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvershark44 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Ok think this may be the problem the ram is 8500 ram the mobo supports 800 ram does this mean the ram I have is too fast for the board? if so is there anyway of slowing it down like you could on DDR1 RAM?? YES! now we are getting there, memory controller issue! You can slow down your ram. You need to go to advanced dram timings, and change from auto to manual and select a lower speed. Try running at ddr 500 or 566 something like that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 Right sorted it My new mobo only has 1 ide slot however I have 2 cd drives an 2 HDD all on IDE so I mad a noob error of running both 1 hdd and cd drive off the same drive.......DOH! Need to get some SATA drives Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvershark44 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Right sorted it My new mobo only has 1 ide slot however I have 2 cd drives an 2 HDD all on IDE so I mad a noob error of running both 1 hdd and cd drive off the same drive.......DOH! Need to get some SATA drives Yeah that was a total noob error! However your going to have major issues with your ram! I cant see them working without some major tweaking. You going to have to underclock them and possibly run more voltage on them. I would visit the OCZ forums through their website, very useful and should help you set everthing up right. If not your going to need different ram. btw good luck bud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 I haven't played with any cutting edge hardware for a while, but the motherboard will run the memory at its (the motherboard/chipset's) maximum speed. Your PC2-8500 (533Mhz) memory will be running as PC2-6400 (400MHz), and that's perfectly fine.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 well vista is installed just got to update all the drivers and off I go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 Well I am now talking to you guys from vista. Any ideas where I can find vista 64bit drivers for the 8800GTX? the nvidia site returns a blank page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colsoop Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 http://www.guru3d.com should have some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvershark44 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 I haven't played with any cutting edge hardware for a while, but the motherboard will run the memory at its (the motherboard/chipset's) maximum speed. Your PC2-8500 (533Mhz) memory will be running as PC2-6400 (400MHz), and that's perfectly fine.. Thats not actually true at all but never mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 got it cheers dude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Thats not actually true at all but never mind. Really? Unless you overclock the chipset, it'll run at it's maximum spec'd bus speed won't it? CPU-Z (freeware download from http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-138.zip ) should report the operating memory frequency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted February 7, 2007 Author Share Posted February 7, 2007 ah my hardware isnt supported by cpu-z yet (now theres a first!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl0s Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 ah my hardware isnt supported by cpu-z yet (now theres a first!) It'll also be reported in the POST screen (where the memory count occurs and the processor speed etc is displayed after power-on). Anyway, it's working so you're doing OK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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