Computer freezes with weird horizontal lines with 2 sticks of RAM

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LoveEnigma3

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Apr 11, 2014
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Hi,

I am facing a tricky issue with my computer.

First, my computer specs in brief:

Gigabyte motherboard, with 4 memory slots (up to 16GB supported), latest BIOS
AMD Phenom II X4 925 Quad-core CPU, 2.8GHZ
4GB RAM = 2 x 2GB Kingston DDR2, 800MHz, 1.8V memory
Windows 7 64-bit SP1

The issue is the computer freezes and pink, blue, yellow colored horizontal lines appear on the monitor when I use two sticks of RAM. And this behavior is random. The PC boots fine with both memory sticks but during use, it freezes abnormally. Sometimes I get BSOD too. And at times, the PC shuts down automatically. Then when I start it again, it seems to have started (because fans are ON), but it won't boot.

I tried some hardware troubleshooting. I check both the RAMs individually by inserting them in the same slot and tested both the cases for 3-4 days and the problem did not occur. This led me to believe that both the RAMs are working fine. I am yet to check if both the RAMs work fine in other slot.

I even did a clean reinstall of Windows (since I had other issues), but this did not solve the problem. I tried clearing the CMOS, loaded optimized defaults, flashed BIOS with latest firmware, etc., and all this did not help either.

One more problem I have is that first memory slot seems to have gone bad, because when I put RAMs in 1st and 2nd DIMM slot, the PC does not boot. Any method to verify this?

Looking for some directions to find out the root cause of the problem.

Thank you in advance for any help.

Have a nice day!
 
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LoveEnigma3

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Hi Tradesman1,

Thank you for your suggestion. However, I marked your reply as "best solution" by mistake (without doing the experiment). Any way to revert?
Sorry.

Meanwhile I posted this thread, I did a few tests with memtest and here are the observations:

1) With both memory sticks A & B present, in slot 3 & 4 respectively, the memtest hangs/locks up. All voltages in BIOS set to auto/normal.
2) I removed B and did memtest with A in the 3rd slot with 2 successful passes. All voltages in BIOS set to auto/normal.
3) I removed A and did memtest with B in the 4th slot and I got one successful pass and during second run got some errors and memtest lock up. All voltages in BIOS set to auto/normal.
4) I did above experiment again with DDR2 voltage raised by +0.1V, and I still faced errors/lock up.

I have uploaded the screenshots on the link below (sorry if flickr is not allowed)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/66287473@N06/

I will continue some more permutations and combinations with only B stick, including your suggestion, and see if that helps. I want to verify completely if the stick B has gone bad or not.



 
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LoveEnigma3

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Hi all,

Apparently, the situation is in control now. As suggested by Tradesman1, I increased both, the CPU voltage (+ 0.05V) and NB voltage (+0.1V), and I was able to get 7-8 successful passes with memtest with BOTH sticks installed. I had latest BIOS flashed and load optimized settings before changing the voltage.

However, during later runs of memtest, I found that memtest got stuck while testing. This happened thrice. Once it just stuck without any error, next the monitor went wild with some random colors on it, and the third time it gave me error "Unexpected interrupt - CPU halted".

Now, I am not able to understand why this would have happened. I am not able to judge if the problem is resolved completely or not because I got a good amount of successful passes with both sticks installed, and later I faced these errors too.

Maximum CPU temperature is 62 degrees C. All voltage are perfect, so I don't consider this as a power supply issue. I have a cooler master 460W PS.

Could anybody please give some advice?

Thanks.
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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Up the CPU/NB a tad more, my initial post was based on a relatively low base guess as to what would actually be needed, I like to start on what I believe to be the low side in order to keep voltages as low as possible, might go up another + 0.03 to 0.04 and see how things go
 
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LoveEnigma3

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Ok, I will try that when I am home and post the observations. Thank you.

Edit: Could anyone please link me to the latest version of memtest86 I should use for testing?
I just want to verify if I am using the right one.

 
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LoveEnigma3

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Hi,

I did the memtest experiment again with CPU voltage raised by +0.075V, NB VID by +0.125V, and NB voltage by +0.1V. Memtest got locked up during one of the passes, but I otherwise got 3-4 successful passes with these changes. All the voltages are still less than +1.4V, so that's is good. Temperature is less than 65 degrees C all the time.

Apart from this, I also installed the catalyst control center and the chipset/SB and raid drivers that come with it. But I am not really sure if I should install anything else apart from this and that these drivers are correct. It is a real pain to find the chipset and other drivers for AMD, because everything is integrated with their CCC (catalyst control center), which is buggy and often gets messed up.

The situation seems to be in control now (fingers crossed!).

Thanks for help. I will get back if I have any other observation.
 
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LoveEnigma3

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Ok, so I got two problems yesterday:
1) The coloured weird lines and PC getting freezedt. I had to manually restart the PC. This happened when I was playing songs in WMP.
2) After some time, got a BSOD saying "irql_not_less_or_equal, address 0x000000A". Before I could see the details, the computer rebooted itself. This happened after about 1 hour of getting the weird lines problem.

I did a quick search on google and I think the 0xA BSOD is not RAM related.

Any idea?

I have got that only once, so can't really conclude. Will update if I get more of them.
 
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LoveEnigma3

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Ok, I will do that when I am home and report results.

By the way, will that command repair bad sectors too, or will just check for file systems integrity?
 
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LoveEnigma3

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My Hard Disk specs:
A) Western Digital Caviar Blue, 320GB, SATA, 7200 RPM - Two partitions. C: OS (90GB), D: Data (210GB)
B) Seagate, 500GB, SATA, 7200 RPM - Four partitions, all data. (chkdsk not done on this yesterday, I have done previously and this drive seems good)

I ran the chkdsk /r on the A hard disk. On the D drive there is no data in bad sectors and results show that "Windows did not find any problems". On the C drive the results show that Windows corrected some file systems, etc., but it also shows 40KB data in bad sectors. Should I worry about this?
I saw the results in the Event Viewer.

I installed Seatools and checked B which passes the SMART and quick generic tests (did not have time for long run test) and I am quite sure that this hard drive does not have any problem, because HDTune also showed no bad sectors.

I installed Western Digital diagnostic utility for Windows to test A and when I launch it, I can see the SMART status as passed. However, when I run the quick test, I get "Read element failure - Error code 7" and the test fails. I tested A with HDTune and found 6 bad blocks.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/other/2779-701022.pdf

I am a bit worried. :( I had just formatted the entire WD hard disk (by deleting the partition and creating new one during installation of Windows) and did a clean install of Windows 7 Pro SP1. The hard disk is 4 years old and it is not under warranty.

Please give some advice.

Thank you.
 
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LoveEnigma3

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Hmmm :(

Should I get a new replacement drive and move my OS partition to it? Would that be recommended?
Because I have already done quite a few software installations, Office installation, Windows updates, etc.

If yes, do you recommend getting SSD? But now I am thinking of getting a 500GB hard disk because I am planning to buy a music software which needs around 250GB free space. So I am thinking to split 500GB into 120GB + 380GB partitions.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your continued help. :)
 
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LoveEnigma3

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Okay. Could you please explain a little the drive structure of your SSD (along with its size)?


 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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On my Haswell, simply have a 256GB Sata III, with Win7 Ultimate, Office and numerous utility and BMs (I use thise to test components for new builds/upgrades/etc....also have Win 8 on it that I run in a VM for support purposes, then a pair of 1 TB platter drives with additional programs and data on one and simply data on the other (along with the cache, temp, etc directories for browsers and other apps and then a small page file
 
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LoveEnigma3

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Apr 11, 2014
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Ok, thanks for the details. I will think about getting SSHD, but probably go with HDD because of budget constraints.


 
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LoveEnigma3

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By the way, can I move my entire Windows 7 installation to other partition of the same drive?

The reason is in my WD 320 GB, I have 2 partitions. C is 90GB and has Windows 7. D is 210GB and currently empty. When I scanned with chkdsk, D drive showed no problems and had no bad sectors. I confirmed that with HDTune. I have total 6 bad blocks which are in the initial portion of the hard disk, which I assume to be the part of C drive (also because chkdsk did some corrections on the C drive).

So, I am thinking to divide D drive into one 90GB and 120GB partitions and then move Windows 7 from C drive to 90GB partition created from D drive. Then I can just format the original C partition and merge it with 120GB partition.

Just trying to work around the problem. My PC is 4 years old and it has DDR2 RAM slots. So, I am thinking to carry on with this PC as long as I can and then buy directly a new one instead of spending anything on this.

Any good reference guide to move Windows 7, if at all possible?

Thanks.


 
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