srmurphy.com

Let me start this by explaining a few little bits. Computing today is currently present in two main forms, 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need to go into the nitty gritty but I do need to explain a couple of differences between the two… well, just one really.

Due to technically restrictions in relation to the way computers work which I don’t need to go into, 32 bit Windows has a limitation on the amount of memory that you can use, 4 gig or more and it will generally only use a little bit above 3 gig, might report that it sees more but ultimately it doesn’t utilise it. Enter 64 bit Windows, allows you to use 4 gig and more (depending on any restrictions imposed within the software).

Now let me present some evidence, only recently 32 bit Windows xp started hanging solid on me, did have some occasional oddities prior but nothing major to threaten operations so to speak. Eager to try Windows 7 during it’s beta period I try installing the 64 bit version however it would display some bad instability which I put down to the test code. When the computer became inoperable I obtain a new motherboard and CPU, in the installation process the memory chips go in reverse order in comparison to how they where in the old board, major instability problem, so much so that even memtest hangs solid!

The verdict in all this is simple, the computer has been operating with a bad memory chip for possibly a long time, you see, I had it installed in the upper most slot so 32 bit Windows didn’t allocate all of it and of course when I tried the beta of 64 bit Windows 7 it was using all of it. The past few months the chip must have degraded to a point that it started effecting 32 bit Windows and when I swapped it into the new board in reverse order, it was the first chip to be used for memory, hence the instability increase.

So why did I not suspect the memory before hand? Well, I was going by prior experience in my judgement, I have experienced both motherboard and memory issues before. Motherboard issue had the symptoms of hard hangs like I had been experiencing and the memory issue produced very very random error messages.

What I have learned in all this, not everything is always as it seems and probably should be a little less quick to judge to which I should probably make an apology to Gigabyte for any bad mouthing that has been roughly aimed in their direction, may have been this memory chip all along and nothing to do with the motherboard.

This is the little bugger

To recap a previous post, computer upgrade, first motherboard bad, replacement, stability issues which turn out to be the PSU, replacement PSU but damage done and motherboard starts failing. At this point I start rethinking things and looking at dismantling the computer for the present.

Well this preented one problem, I would at time play my 360 through the capture card onto the computer to free up the main TV for the lady and suddenly I no longer had this option so I seeked out obtaining a flat screen monitor that I had originally been planing on picking up before the computer went up on me and so I could get back to gaming while having the TV freeded up again.

The lovely Samsung Syncmaster arrived a couple of weeks back…

All 24 inches of it with a resolution of 1920×1200… well once I played the 360 on it for a bit (at 1080p I might add just to make sure I got as much out of it as I presently could) I was wanting my computer back.

Soooooo I set out to get the bits required and keeping in mind I was still needing to rebuild my mother’s computer too, a new motherboard, cpu, keyboard and mouse soon arrived.

However all is not well, as I type this I am still restricted to the laptop, the on board GPU is buggered which normally wouldn’t matter as I don’t use rubbish on board GPUs but even then the motherboard is showing big stability issues… which is a real shame as I was starting to like Windows 7 that I finally managed to get installed. Memtest won’t even run without halting :s

So, still without a computer, the mashups will have to wait… oh, I’m still to make a post about that.

It’s getting a bit tiresome now, new card hasn’t arrived yet so have to go and give the bank a good kicking, however, I’ve got a bit of a backup plan as until I get the new card my computer is effectively useless.

The motherboard story all started back when doing a pretty routine upgrade on my system last year, new motherboard, new CPU and new memory being the main elements. Motherboard was a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 , CPU was a Phenom 9500 although it doesn’t really matter in this case (and I knew about the TLB bug).

The first motherboard I got along with the other bits I built up a mini test system just to make sure all was working correctly… now, normally I don’t go through this step but it was just as well I did. All powered up and set a memtest going to make sure all the memory checked out while in the mean time I sorted out a BIOS update.

Put the relevant files on the thumb drive, plugged it into the new system, pressed the reset button, screen goes blank and the fans stop spinning… ‘ok’ I thought and press the power button to turn the system back on and nothing, not even a flicker. Yup, pushing the reset button to reset the machine somehow killed the motherboard.

Usual routine of returns, new one back, hook it all up, all testes out (keeping well away from the reset button) and before long the new system was all built up and fully reinstalled, first reinstall of Windows XP in something like 3 or so years.

That was not to be the end of it however, random blue screens along with the odd other weirdness was to plague my operation even though memory fully checked out which would be a typical cause. The only thing I could link it to was a hard drive spinning back up… although in hindsight it all makes sense now.

May not have been as bad but it corrupted my install a few times which was quite a worry and sometimes it flipped out at the BIOS screen which was a big worry, all the time pointing the finger at the motherboard.

So it was now at a point where if I wanted to reboot I would have to switch it off for half hour or it wouldn’t boot back up properly getting stuck at post and every now and then the USB port the keyboard and mouse was plugged into would cut out and I was having this particular problem at this particular time, on, off, on, off, on, smell something burning, off.

My first thought was the motherboard had started burning up so I started taking all apart to investigate… the smell was coming from the PSU and boy did it stink. I soon learned that the PSU was not rated at what I thought it was, whether this is my own fault or not I don’t know but a new more powerful PSU sorted out all problems however I think damage had already been done.

So now, still with its quirks it added a new one, hanging hard at a random interval from booting up… even during boot up and now it is just completely unusable and that brings us to my present predicament.