OCZ Gold PC6400 and Biostar TForce4

phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
edited August 2006 in Hardware
Biostar TForce4
2 GB of OCZ Gold RAM
AMD Athlon X2 4600+
OCZ Powerstream 520W Power Supply
Western Digital Raptor 74GB (10k rpm)
GECube Radeon X1600Pro Dual DVI (256mb i think)

System won't boot after a perfectly clean reinstallation of winxp pro sp2 ... (I used WD's data lifeguard to zero fill part of the disk before reinstalling)... Also tried reinstalling windows at least 10 times now... At the suggestion of Sean at OCZ (phone tech support).. I upped the mem voltage from 1.8v to 2.1v in the motherboard bios (sean said the system would be unstable if I didn't do that)... didn't help, then he suggested I just try to get the system stable by clocking back the memory in the bios from DDR800 to DDR667 or slightly lower (although he said running the mem at DDR400 would cause windows to not boot)... I also tried different DDR2... same problem.. I also tried updating the motherboard's bios... same problem.. tested a different vid card... same problem.. tested a different hard drive.. same problem

-Windows WILL boot into safe mode.

-If I do a repair installation of windows, I am prompted for motherboard and video drivers during the install and then Windows WILL boot... HOWEVER.. I get random error messages on a variety of programs "Unable to located entry point for ..... dynamic link library" - sometimes photoshop, sometimes indesign, sometimes firefox... Outlook won't give that error message, but will give me the standard, "Outlook encountered an error, do you want to report to Microsoft?"... Illustrator recently gave me a crazy error about missing plugins (google revealed that the pref. folder became corrupted for whatever reason).

-prime kindly offered to let me come over to his house tonight and let me swap out my motherboard, etc. and test it out (he's got that sweet test kit that was reviewed on this site)... I'll see what that yields.

-Anybody have any experience with this type of issue with any of these parts? Anyone have experience with this motherboard? I'm thinking the motherboard is the problem and it's either incompatibility or a bad part. Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thanks. Word.

Comments

  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited July 2006
    I brought my box over to prime's house last night to do some more troubleshooting of my system. What we came up with (two things): bad sata cable, incompatible ram... My OCZ Gold causes random crashes in Windows so we tried prime's OCZ Special Op's Edition and it works perfectly in my machine. I'm not sure if this is an issue of incompatibility or a bad stick (they test fine in memtest), but I just want a solution. If any OCZ guys are reading this... I would love to swap my 2GB of Gold Edition for 2GB of Special Ops Edition (b/c it works and I'm sick of troubleshooting). Thanks to prime for all his help and thanks to OCZ in advance for taking care of this issue quickly and smoothly. Word.

    this is my ram - OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit System Memory

    :honoes:
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Actually it's the motherboard manufacturers who have screwed the pooch on the compatibility issue here. I'm not sure how, since the AMD processors have the integrated memory controller, but somehow the mobo makers are introducing incompatibility on the switch to DDR2. We just had a similar problem with an Asus board.
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited July 2006
    Just for the record, I think OCZ is going to hook it up.. I spoke with Sean at OCZ a minute ago.. he emailed me an rma form and he said he could swap my ocz gold for the ocz special ops ed. I'll try to keep you updated on how this works out.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    nice!
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    I need a hookup like that. :rant: The OCZ ram I bought and the replacement sent were defective or incompatible. :bawling:
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    BH: what board and RAM combination are you using? I'm willing to be it's another manufacturer flub. If you're using an Asus board, follow the steps that we did in this thread: http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47680 and see if they work for you at all. We were first able to boot into BIOS by using only one stick of RAM in the second set of banks.
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    I'm on a MSI K9N Neo Rev 1.0 with some 1GB (2x 512MB) Gold Series PC2 4200.

    One stick of the original dual channel kit works but the rest don't. Haven't fiddled around with the timings since I don't know how, but I have updated the bios twice (updates upped the voltage and changed one of the timings to 2t). Tried different combinations and one stick in different slots to no avail.

    I'm currently waiting for the arrival of another kit and see if that works.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    In our solution with the Asus board, Marcus said that he had issues with an MSI board as well - in his case, changing which set of slots the RAM was in helped the issue, for some reason. For the record, that seemed to do the trick for us as well.

    I hope the new RAM works for you!
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Black Hawk,

    You need to flash that board with the latest betabios and set the TRAS to 15 in the bios. Try that and see.
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    How come 1 stick from the dual channel kit works but the other doesn't?
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    I wish i had a perfect answer to that, but i haven't. SOmetimes a board needs one stick and the timings and voltages set and then the other as i suggested. Especially with the board you have. It really needs the latest betabios.
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    TheLostSwede wrote:
    Black Hawk,

    You need to flash that board with the latest betabios and set the TRAS to 15 in the bios. Try that and see.
    Doesn't work. Hell, I installed all 4 sticks to see if one of the other three showed up and nothing. Changed some settings and everything. :bawling:

    Edit for clarification: The machine boots, but only sees the working stick. The others are like if they weren't there. Other than that, even with the other sticks installed, the machine works fine.
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Thats weird. Send me an email so i can get you a new kit.
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    TheLostSwede wrote:
    Thats weird. Send me an email so i can get you a new kit.
    It's all been worked out. Earlier today I received an RMA confirmation where they'll be shipping out the replacement ram within 36hrs and have upgraded me to some PC2 5400 Gold XTC. :buck:
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited July 2006
    So I got the Special Ops edition replacement for the Gold edition kit that I had... according to Sean at OCZ, there is no difference that he's aware of between the Gold edition and the special ops... the only difference I am aware of is that the Special ops edition works with my machine and the gold doesn't... (or at least the gold kit that I had)... I have not gotten a SINGLE error since I have installed windows with the new RAM.. I do have the mem overvolted to 2.1v as recommended by Sean... I am just pleased that everything is working. Hopefully somebody will benefit from my struggle. Big thanks to prime for helping me diagnose that issue(s)... Word.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    So weird... What ram slots are your memory sticks in?
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited July 2006
    Slots 1A and 2A (i think that's how they're labeled)... the slots closest to the processor (the first and second slots). Maybe it was just bad RAM (even though it passed mem test)
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Everything sorted Phush?
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited August 2006
    Yep... everything is all taken care of.. the machine runs like a dream... ha, my only complaint now is that prices on the athlon x2 am2's seem to have plummeted in the ONE month since I bought mine.. (I'll probably end up building another one b/c I like it so much)
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