Problems after upgrading RAM

partially

Distinguished
Jun 3, 2009
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18,510
So I have been using Windows 7 RC1 for a while with no problems.

EDIT: (Wrong board before) Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R rev1 board
q6600 core processor
4GB G.Skill F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ RAM

My problems started when I tried upgrading to 8GB of RAM. I bought exactly the same RAM as before to avoid any compatability issues.

However when inserting my computer wouldn't boot, just giving a black-screen. Typical sign of faulty or poorly mounted RAM. I pulled it out, and also swapped it around (ie the stick I had in the right RAM bank I put in the left, and vice versa), this time the computer started fine. BIOS read all the RAM etc.

However Windows 7 took like 5mins to boot. The operating system was completely unresponsive, and CPU usage was at 100%, on all 4 cores, hmmm.

I decided it might be faulty RAM, however the Windows performance monitor rated the RAM as a max 7, higher than before, which would seem odd if the RAM was dud :heink: . I decided to it may be a compatability problem, and attempted to do a clean OS install.

Insane install process, sitting doing nothing for extended periods of time, and eventually taking 4hours+ to install, the completing installation step alone took over an hour. Afterwards win7 was even worse then before.


Step 2. Wiped everything and reinstalled Vista, quicker but seemingly slower then what I remembered. Installation finished, and OS was responsive, though still seeming to have high CPU usage, (pull the RAM CPU at like 1-40% usage - with the 8GB in 30-90% usage). Also boot times are noticably slower, and when installing updates it can take 5+ mins longer to respond.


Anybody got any idea what is happening here? Compatibility problem? Faulty RAM? Any tests I can run or something?
 

partially

Distinguished
Jun 3, 2009
2
0
18,510
Hey,

Thanks for the response. I finally managed to solve the issue, having the computer unresponsive just made it so I couldn't solve it faster.

It seems that the motherboard had an old bodgy BIOS, it saw all 8GB but it seemed to only be addressing 4GB. And for whatever reason the extra 4GB was causing massive slowdown. Updating the BIOS worked magic.