VISTA booting extremely slow brand new computer

[ecsancho]

Vista 32
4gb
500gb HD
Nvidia 9800 GX2 1024
Q9600 2.6ghz

I've been up all night trying to fix this..

So I have been having issues with installing WOW and AOC due to memory issues, so I downloaded memtest and prime95 to diagnostic the problem, will it reported back that memory slot 1 had 410 errors, but I was having problems isolating if the it was a bad slot or bad stick. So I ran prime95 torture test and during the test I received a bluescreen and it came up and went away so fast I couldn't notice the error so I had to reboot.When the computer came back up it started going extremely slow, so I decided to reboot into safe mode. It took roughly like 10 mins to just see the windows logo then another 10-15 mins to get to log in screen then another 10 mins to type my password then another 20 mins to see my desktop and this was all done in Safemode.

So now I rebooted again, this time I would get black screen for like 30 mins after Windows logo. So I decided to just re-install Vista it took a very long time to get to Vista re-install screen and next think you know it I get blue screen with the following error

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
nvstor.sys address 863e9395 base at 863e50000 DATAMAP 46671a61

So then I figured it was dvd drive I was install from so I unplug the defective drive and used my 2nd dvd and run install again, this time I managed to install Vista took roughly 3 hours, and now BINGO re-installing didn't do anything because it still takes nearly an hour to just boot up.

Now I'am convinced this has to be hardware issue, but I don't know what it could it be, I ran a system diagnostics I tested CPU (passed) motherboard (passed) hard drive (passed) memory(I'm surprise that it passed) the only thing I couldn't test is my graphics card, so now Im really stump, I'm leaning towards that its a bad motherboard or Hard drive but I don't have enough experience to distinguish the symptoms. Please help me with this, my business and my family depends on this computer running.

 

[Scotteq]

With memory amounts increasing so much lately, we see a lot of issues with getting this set up.

First, manually set all your timings and manually set your voltages to the upper range of the maker's specs. Ensure the command rate is manually set to 2T. And ensure that tRFC ("Refresh to Activate Delay") is set to 54 or greater.


Regarding the card - If you have another video card available, you can swap them out to see does that solve anything.

 

[ecsancho]

Thanks for the quick response but how can I determine the the proper voltage for my ram stick? I have 1gb Samsung 800 mhz PC 6400, nothing on on stick indicates voltage.

 

[Scotteq]

Well.. The standard voltage for DDR2 is 1.8v... Given that you have 4 1GB sticks, and need to account for a certain amount of voltage drop, I'd go 2.0 and leave it at that.


The other thing you can try is take out two of the sticks of RAM - Given that you have a 1GB video card, you're probably only going to be able to use around 2.25~2.5 anyhow due to address space limitations for your 32 bit OS...

 

[ecsancho]

Here's the test I have run already. I unplug my 2nd HD and 2nd DVD drive.
I've ran memtest with 1gb stick in board in all 4 slots with 2 different stick individually, no errors were spotted

I have prime95 torture test for which during the test it crashed the computer within 5-10 mins into test.

I removed CMOS battery but did not reset the jumper.

Before the crash, I've ran CHKDSK and defrag, and spotted no errors

After the crashed I ran different HD test using Ultimate Boot Disk which has all the utilities to run diagnostic on individual components. And the HD passed all test.

I've re-installed Vista using 1gb stick in different slots multiple times.

One thing I notice is that I can't get into Partition utility hitting F12 at startup. It says that Partition Utility was not found. I'm going to try to reset the BIOS jumpers.

By the descriptions I have given you guys, out your expertise what do you think the source of the problem could be? Could the Graphics card be the issue or PSU defective? I'm going to buy a new HD later on this afternoon and run install.

When I get home I'm going to run memtest on last 2 sticks that I haven't already done.