2 sticks ram = no boot

FooharFoohar tennessee
edited January 2010 in Hardware
Hello, I seem to have an odd problem on my hands here.
I have a Epox EP-5EDAI motherboard with 4 total ram slots, 2 each for DDR1 and DDR2.
It has a little LED readout on the board for when something goes wrong, the trouble here is it reads "AF" when I try to use more than 1 stick of ram. Here is the PC in a nutshell via Everest.

Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.1.2600
Computer Type ACPI Multiprocessor PC
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Service Pack Service Pack 3
Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.5512
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4 531, 3466 MHz (15 x 231)
Motherboard Name Epox EP-5EDAI (3 PCI, 2 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16, 2 DDR DIMM, 2 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, LAN)
Motherboard Chipset Intel Grantsdale i915P
System Memory 1024 MB (DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM)
DIMM3: Corsair Value Select VS1GB533D2 1 GB DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM (4-4-4-12 @ 266 MHz) (3-3-3-9 @ 200 MHz)
BIOS Type Award (01/18/06) (Just flashed from a 02/01/02 version)
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+ (512 MB)
DMI BIOS Vendor Phoenix Technologies, LTD
DMI BIOS Version 6.00 PG
DMI Motherboard Product i915P DDR + DDR2: 5EDAI

The mobo book does not list "AF" as an error code, nor anything that it could be mistaken as.

I've tried each of 4 Sticks of Corsair PC2-4300, Some Dell DDR2 sticks, Several different types of DDR (Kingston,Generic ValueRam ect.)
And the problem persists. The only thing I know of that could fix this is a new fixed BIOs but ~16 hours of searching and I"ve found nothing.

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    More than likely your motherboard has kicked the bucket if several sticks of RAM in various combinations won't fix the issue.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    I had an ASUS board die on me with the same sort of issue... it was a sad day
  • FooharFoohar tennessee
    edited January 2010
    Thanks for the replys guys. I just had another Epox board die on me (EP-8HDA1 for 754) from a brownout :mad:
    Epox's boards have been known to be about the same quality as Fisher Price.
    The board performs great on all other aspects other than the small issue of "NTDLR missing" from it wanting to boot from the IDE drive.
    I have read every single thread on the internet about "AF" errors, seems MSI boards share them too. It's a compatbility issue and/or a bug in the BIOS, trouble is, Epox is out of business, and all of there site's other than the russian one is down, and the only update to the perticular bios, is russian.

    The motherboard only costs $19 + shipping, http://www.epoxstore.com/Product_Detail.asp?Product_ID=1108 so I guess this kinda stuff is a given
    :grumble:
  • FooharFoohar tennessee
    edited January 2010
    Forgot to add cpuz stuff

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  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    I use to use Epox on low budget builds... I stopped after 2 boards went bad on me.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    the trouble here is it reads "AF" when I try to use more than 1 stick of ram
    Well, see, there's your problem. 'AF' is an acronym for AH F$#%!

    Epox? They went out of business in 2007, didn't they? If someone is buying Epox brand boards, those boards must be used or built by another company, only with the Epox name.
  • DonutDonut Maine New
    edited January 2010
    http://www.epox.com/
    More than likely cleaning out the warehouse, or "Epox 20$ store" :D
  • FooharFoohar tennessee
    edited January 2010
    Leonardo wrote:
    Well, see, there's your problem. 'AF' is an acronym for AH F$#%!

    Epox? They went out of business in 2007, didn't they? If someone is buying Epox brand boards, those boards must be used or built by another company, only with the Epox name.

    Thanks Leo, you will have to excuse my ignorance here but how exactly does AF translate to "AH +F$#%!" ?

    Looking in the manual, the closest thing I can find is "0Ah" which is "Disable ps2 mouse interface (optional), Auto detect ports for mouse & keyboard, and Reset keyboard for Winbound 977 series Super I/O chips.

    Seems sorta irrelevent to me.

    But yeah, epox is long gone now, they changed there name to SuPox or something like that, I think another company bought the stock out and is doing a Biglots kinda thing.

    Guess I learned the hardway that you get what you pay for.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    'AF' is an acronym for AH F$#%!
    Foohar, sorry, my attempt at humor didn't quite make it. I was implying that 'AF' was the motherboard code to indicate to the user, "You are screwed!"
  • FooharFoohar tennessee
    edited January 2010
    Leonardo wrote:
    Foohar, sorry, my attempt at humor didn't quite make it. I was implying that 'AF' was the motherboard code to indicate to the user, "You are screwed!"


    ;D Sorry Leo, I'm pretty dense today. I need to brush up on my nerd-humor more, as I'm a little rusty :P

    But I think I agree, Me = Fubar'd because I just discovered, it's not 2 sticks of ram that causes an AF, but using one of the 2 top ram slots causes it.

    Ah well, hard lesson learned.
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