Ugh... semi new build woes

dreamliner77

The Analog Kid
Joined
16 Mar 2002
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This is kind of a follow up from this thread here: http://www.osnn.net/graphics-cards/100798-weird-possible-video-card-issue.html#post876831

So here's what I have now:
AMD X2 6000+ (Brisbane)
ASUS M4A785-M
4x1GB Wintec AmpX DDR2-800
Samsung F1 500GB (boot drive)
Samsung F3 1TB (storage)
BenQ DW1650 IDE DVD burner
Samsung SH203B SATA DVD burner
Zalman 9500 cooler
Seasonic ST-50EF PSU
Encore Wireless N PCI card

Build went together great and booted my old Win XP install fine. My first annoyance was that this mobo can't control the Zalman fan speed as it's not PWM. My old biostar board did just fine. Secondly, I STILL can't seem to get DVI working. So I move forward.

I go to install Win7-64 Ultimate and it keeps blue screening during install. So I delete ALL the partitions on the boot drive and let Windows create a new partition during install. At this time it also creates a 100MB "System" partition for test files? I've never seen this before and don't know how normal it is. Finally Win7 installs.

All is fine for about 10 minutes until Win 7 crashes. It is NOT a stable install. Last night I ran Samsung's ESTool on the boot drive and it passed all tests. I have run Memtest+ on this memory about a week ago and it passed 24 hours. It is currently through 6 hours of testing now without a problem. I know the PSU is good. The CPU runs Orthos without errors. Ubuntu seems to run fine on the system.

What the hell is going on here?
 
Last edited:
Just did 3 Windows installs and never saw a partition for test files.

It should not matter but... Format the drive and start over.

And what about the video? Is it the card from the old system that was having problems?
 
I did format and started over. Deleted all partitions and let Windows 7 disc format the drive. The old vid card is gone; using the onboard gfx on the new motherboard.

At this point, my thoughts are that it's either a ram problem that memtest isn't catching or a cpu problem... both of which I'd find highly unlikely.
 
Maybe the modo is screwed up? any chance of trying a different one?
 
I don't think it's the mobo. Reasoning behind this is that I was experiencing problems with (what I thought) was my last board. I mean, it would be my luck that it would be the board, I just don't think that it is.

The memory just completed 24 hours memtest86+. I think today I will replace all internal cabling.
 
Let's recap:

Ubuntu is stable with same hardware.

Windows 7 is not stable.

The difference is the device drivers (assuming Win 7 is basically stable which seems a safe assumption at this point).

Start trying older/newer device drivers for the hardware. A BIG task considering how many drivers are out there. Haven't used SiSoft (or any benchmark in years) but they used to have a suite of stress tests you could apply one at a time or in groups. You might be able to narrow down the driver issue by stressing different hardware for a while.

Anything in the Windows crash logs?
 
the 100mb partition win 7 makes is actually the boot manager that boots windows itself off of the larger partition :)

If your onboard or discreet video hardware are nVidia, be aware that the nvidia drivers ( all versions) cause random BSODS in win 7 (at least I've not had a build so far - including the default win 7 ones - that don't bsod randomly).

Additionally make sure that all the sata cables are plugged in firmly - ideally you want ones with the clip on them at the disk end of things and better still mobo end as well.

Finally nVidia mainboard chipsets are known to be unstable at the hardware level so if your board is based on one of them that could also be a cause.
 
the 100mb partition win 7 makes is actually the boot manager that boots windows itself off of the larger partition :)

If your onboard or discreet video hardware are nVidia, be aware that the nvidia drivers ( all versions) cause random BSODS in win 7 (at least I've not had a build so far - including the default win 7 ones - that don't bsod randomly).

Additionally make sure that all the sata cables are plugged in firmly - ideally you want ones with the clip on them at the disk end of things and better still mobo end as well.

Finally nVidia mainboard chipsets are known to be unstable at the hardware level so if your board is based on one of them that could also be a cause.

Tomorrow I will be replacing all SATA and IDE cables. There is nothing NVIDIA in this build. It's ATI 785G chipset.

Does the boot manager really need 100 MB? Shouldn't that be part of the MBR?
 
I don't think it is just the boot manager as on my dual boot system the boot folder is only 15 MB and recovery is over 100MB.

Most likely this is the recovery partition and you can remove it if you want to.

As long as you have the DVD you do not really need the recovery partition but make sure it is in fact the recovery partition before removing it.

Folder would be named Recovery and the folder within that will have a series of numbers/letters such as 22d25550-27d4-11e0-98e0-fdf72f1fd004

Removing Windows 7 Recovery Partition | ITcookbook.net
 
I think the mystery is solved (I hope) for now. After 49.5 hours of memtest86+, the memory finally threw an error.

Anyone got 4GB of DDR2-800 they want to sell cheap?
 
Relax the bios timings on the memory sticks and see if memtest still throws an error.

And the question should have been "Anyone want to buy 4 GB of DD2?" ;)
 
I'm glad you could sort it out ! weird that it took so long for it to pop an error, but at least ram is cheap these days ;) hehe
 
I'm glad you could sort it out ! weird that it took so long for it to pop an error, but at least ram is cheap these days ;) hehe

Well I was kind of stupid since I really didn't think it was the ram. I tested all 4 sticks at once. Once I started testing each stick individually, it only took about an hour to throw an error. It would be cheaper if it was DDR3. Oh well, I'm in the process of RMAing the sticks. Hopefully Wintec will honor their limited lifetime warranty.
 
Ohh, I see! Well, good luck then =]
 

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