OCZ ram & cooling

[engrbill47]

Last year I built a AMD quad core (2.2 Ghz) PC with a Gigabyte MB and a killer Thermal Take heatsink for the cpu. The MB was designed for 667 Mhz ram, but I got cheap and bought 533 Mhz. A few months ago, I purchased two 1 gigabyte sticks of OCZ ram (800 Mhz) w/ heat pipe heat sinks attached. Now I find that the heat pipes on the CPU heatsink would interfere w/ the RAM heat sinks. Are there any really serious heat issues with my carefully removing the RAM heatsinks and installing the RAM? My CPU typically runs 2-3 degrees cooler than room ambient.

 

[damian86]

so the maximum on your mobo is 667 mhz but 800 mhz works fine?
if the ram is very close to the cpu cooler you could try to move them to the next slot, and the same with the other stick.

 

[roonj]

It's not inconceivable that removing the ram heat sinks could damage the ram. I have heard that some require using a heat gun or blower to soften the adheasive holding them on. Also it will certainly void your warranty. As damian says add the new ram to the second bank furthest from the cpu.

 

[evongugg]

AM2 and above should use DDR2-800 or better.
Your CPU has to be over room temperature, otherwise there is an error in the program you are using to measure temperature. Use RealTemp, it's a good program.

 

[engrbill47]

so the maximum on your mobo is 667 mhz but 800 mhz works fine?
if the ram is very close to the cpu cooler you could try to move them to the next slot, and the same with the other stick.

I have a bigger problem now.

My homemade PC, a AMD Phenom Quad Core CPU, 2 -80 Gig WD SATA HD's, Gigabyte MD. Thermal Take Typhoon cooler, 2 gigs of RAM, has given me the Win XP "blue screen of death" The machine just froze on the web page that I was on and debooted. And the the blue screen appeared with the cryptic message "unmountable boot sector". I found a web site that suggested loading the Win XP disc ( The Win XP disc that I used was a Dell.) and rebooted the beast. I then attempted the suggested command, CHKDSK/R. No joy. The message was "that command is not supported". But I did see a command that looked appropriate, just "R". I did that from the "C" prompt. The system asked "repair boot sector of drive "D"?, and I assuming that the CD drive was now "C" and the my "C" HD was now "D", I said yes, and pushed enter. The system said the boot sector had been repaired and so I rebooted. Same bloody blue screen. What I want to know is my "C" drive fixable w/o reformatting?

 

[engrbill47]

It's not inconceivable that removing the ram heat sinks could damage the ram. I have heard that some require using a heat gun or blower to soften the adheasive holding them on. Also it will certainly void your warranty. As damian says add the new ram to the second bank furthest from the cpu.

I have a bigger problem now.


My homemade PC, a AMD Phenom Quad Core CPU, 2 -80 Gig WD SATA HD's, Gigabyte MD. Thermal Take Typhoon cooler, 2 gigs of RAM, has given me the Win XP "blue screen of death" The machine just froze on the web page that I was on and debooted. And the the blue screen appeared with the cryptic message "unmountable boot sector". I found a web site that suggested loading the Win XP disc ( The Win XP disc that I used was a Dell.) and rebooted the beast. I then attempted the suggested command, CHKDSK/R. No joy. The message was "that command is not supported". But I did see a command that looked appropriate, just "R". I did that from the "C" prompt. The system asked "repair boot sector of drive "D"?, and I assuming that the CD drive was now "C" and the my "C" HD was now "D", I said yes, and pushed enter. The system said the boot sector had been repaired and so I rebooted. Same bloody blue screen. What I want to know is my "C" drive fixable w/o reformatting?

 

[engrbill47]

AM2 and above should use DDR2-800 or better.
Your CPU has to be over room temperature, otherwise there is an error in the program you are using to measure temperature. Use RealTemp, it's a good program.

I have abigger problem now.


My homemade PC, a AMD Phenom Quad Core CPU, 2 -80 Gig WD SATA HD's, Gigabyte MD. Thermal Take Typhoon cooler, 2 gigs of RAM, has given me the Win XP "blue screen of death" The machine just froze on the web page that I was on and debooted. And the the blue screen appeared with the cryptic message "unmountable boot sector". I found a web site that suggested loading the Win XP disc ( The Win XP disc that I used was a Dell.) and rebooted the beast. I then attempted the suggested command, CHKDSK/R. No joy. The message was "that command is not supported". But I did see a command that looked appropriate, just "R". I did that from the "C" prompt. The system asked "repair boot sector of drive "D"?, and I assuming that the CD drive was now "C" and the my "C" HD was now "D", I said yes, and pushed enter. The system said the boot sector had been repaired and so I rebooted. Same bloody blue screen. What I want to know is my "C" drive fixable w/o reformatting?

 

[damian86]

yeah, it looks like you had a power problem? check this out it might help and explain how it happened http://www.technize.com/2007/07/11/how-to-fix-unmountable-boot-volume-in-windows-xp/

 

[engrbill47]

yeah, it looks like you had a power problem? check this out it might help and explain how it happened http://www.technize.com/2007/07/11/how-to-fix-unmountable-boot-volume-in-windows-xp/

Damian86: I did not install the recovery console with Win XP. I have attempted several times to "fixboot". Eventhough the screen says that the boot sector has been repaired, I still get the blue screen of death with "unmountable boot volume". When I push R when the XP setup screen comes up, the is only a very brief moment when I can type in the number that the bottom of the screen asks for. SO far, I haven't beaten the clock. I am at my whits end.

 

[damian86]

typical, tehe recovery console will be very usefull on this king of issues,but we never think of installing it...it happened to me once...
but if your able to boot your xp theres no boot to repair,have you tried to plug that hdd as a slave on another pc? ..

if not i will just grab another copy of windows xp.im not sure about installing a Dell/other manufacturers copy on a home built machine.you are using it with another hardware.
can you tell me your pc specs? motherboard,memory etc...
double check that ur motherboard supports the minimum speed of your ram.

 

[engrbill47]

typical, tehe recovery console will be very usefull on this king of issues,but we never think of installing it...it happened to me once...
but if your able to boot your xp theres no boot to repair,have you tried to plug that hdd as a slave on another pc? ..

if not i will just grab another copy of windows xp.im not sure about installing a Dell/other manufacturers copy on a home built machine.you are using it with another hardware.
can you tell me your pc specs? motherboard,memory etc...
double check that ur motherboard supports the minimum speed of your ram.

Damian86:
The MB is a Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 and the manual says that up to 2 gigs of 800 Mhz of DDR2 ram is supported (until I move the bolted down Typhoon cpu cooler 90 degrees to clear the coolers on the new ram, I've got 2 gigs of 533 Mhz generic ram), 2 -80 Gig WD sata HD's, a CD-ROM Read write device, a Nvidia Geforce 9600 vid card w/ 3/4 of a gig of on-board ram, and a Antec 430 watt PS.

Now, what do you mean about slaveing the HD in question to another PC? Is this for repair? Or is it to read and record the data before formatting it again?

 

[damian86]

ok.i mean,you put that hdd on another pc,runing its own system,but make your hdd a slave,as a storage device,change the back pin or clip,whatever you call them, to "slave"and automatically should be repaired.

if you want to give it a last shot:
boot the computer with the Windows xp cd.
At the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to select the repair option.
At the command prompt - type chkdsk /r press Enter.
Type Exit > press <Enter>.

If that doesn't help:
Repeat the steps, but type fixboot instead of chkdsk /r.

Now,if your computer can boot your system,and you can log on into windows,there's not point in doing this,just make a clean install,but before that,clear the CMOS

if you dont know how to do it:
Unplug power cord
Remove battery
Remove jumper from pin 2+3 (clrtc) to 1+2
Wait 4 seconds
Move jumper back to pin 2+3
Reinstall battery
Plug in power cord and turn on pc

I hope you get it fixed

 

[damian86]

so, that motherboard has integrated graphics port.make sure you disable it if you are running the nvidia video card

have you read the manual? i have it downloaded from gigabite site,& i had a look at it,look what it says

To meet expansion requirements, it is recommended that a power supply that can withstand
high power consumption be used (500W or greater). If a power supply is used that does not
provide the required power, the result can lead to an unstable or unbootable system.

 

[engrbill47]

Damian86:
Before this problem occured, I had approximately 1 year of trouble free operation. The Antec PS apparently supported the system operation quite well. But I suspect that the occasional freezes and subsequent switching off of the PS may have caused my "unmountable boot volume". I've tried the Win XP "R" route several times now, each w/ failure. I can only hope that my buddy can find his bootable USB HD and we can attempt that solution.

 

[Mongox]

The motherboard is much older than 1 yr.

Yes, the bootable USB HD might help, if you can configure this old board to use it.

What they were trying to explain is for you to physically remove your current hard drive and take it to your buddy's house. Plug it into his computer and boot his to his normal drive. This should give you access to your drive AND data. Copy off everything you want. Re-install in your computer, reinstall Windows and reformat it - which will fix the boot sector.

The more you mess with the drive the less likely you are to recover the data. Don't mess with it anymore and try what was described - the data is key thing now.

--- Something has occured to me. You said you had two SATA drives in this computer. One is the system/boot drive, the other is ???.... regardless, check the BIOS for the boot order. It may be trying to boot from the other drive. Try removing the connections for the 2nd non-boot drive and see if your other drive will boot alone.

 

[engrbill47]

The motherboard is much older than 1 yr.

Yes, the bootable USB HD might help, if you can configure this old board to use it.

What they were trying to explain is for you to physically remove your current hard drive and take it to your buddy's house. Plug it into his computer and boot his to his normal drive. This should give you access to your drive AND data. Copy off everything you want. Re-install in your computer, reinstall Windows and reformat it - which will fix the boot sector.

The more you mess with the drive the less likely you are to recover the data. Don't mess with it anymore and try what was described - the data is key thing now.

--- Something has occured to me. You said you had two SATA drives in this computer. One is the system/boot drive, the other is ???.... regardless, check the BIOS for the boot order. It may be trying to boot from the other drive. Try removing the connections for the 2nd non-boot drive and see if your other drive will boot alone.

Mongox:
The MB may be older than a year, But I bought it new. But that's beside the point. Right now I'm trying to just save data. When Win XP fails, it seems to fail permanently. And I know that my boot order is correct in the bios.

 

[Mongox]

OK, I'm not saying change the boot order - I'm saying make it un-necessary just to test the ability of the system drive to boot. If you disconnect the 2nd drive, it'll force all actions on the 1st.

And again, saving data is the goal. That's why putting your drive into the buddy's system, which has a good boot drive, is the best way to get your data off.

Don't complicate the saving of data by trying to fix the boot problem. You don't care if the only way to get the drive working is to re-format it, as long as you can get the data off first!

 

[damian86]

The motherboard is much older than 1 yr.

Yes, the bootable USB HD might help, if you can configure this old board to use it.

What they were trying to explain is for you to physically remove your current hard drive and take it to your buddy's house. Plug it into his computer and boot his to his normal drive. This should give you access to your drive AND data. Copy off everything you want. Re-install in your computer, reinstall Windows and reformat it - which will fix the boot sector.

The more you mess with the drive the less likely you are to recover the data. Don't mess with it anymore and try what was described - the data is key thing now.

--- Something has occured to me. You said you had two SATA drives in this computer. One is the system/boot drive, the other is ???.... regardless, check the BIOS for the boot order. It may be trying to boot from the other drive. Try removing the connections for the 2nd non-boot drive and see if your other drive will boot alone.

So were you trying to say that he's probably got 2 systems on boot at the same time, and thats why his xp boot sector keeps on failing?

 

[Mongox]

Not necessarily - the drive showing it has a bad boot sector may have NO boot sector. That is, it's trying to boot from the other drive which doesn't have the system on it.

Normally, this would give a no NTLDR (?) message - but not always.

 

[engrbill47]

So were you trying to say that he's probably got 2 systems on boot at the same time, and thats why his xp boot sector keeps on failing?

damian86 & mongox:
I solved my problem the hard way. I gave up trying to "save" data and just formatted the drive. My computer guru loaned me a 40 gig WD HD with Win XP on it. But I could not specify that the "loaner" was to be the boot drive. My bios would'nt or didn't have that option. It showed up on the bios, and the "dead" drive did not, but I could not even get a whimper out of the loaner drive. And to top off everything, I started to load Win XP after formatting the "C" drive, only to find that I didn't have the correct license number for that disk. So I had to go back and find the Win XP disk that had the license number on the sleeve. After loading WIn XP, I could'nt get on the internet. I called my ISP service provider, Verizon. But I couldmn't get the d@&% phone number for the web site on my wife's PC. I had to google it and get it on a non-verizon site. And then I had to deal witth the bloody voice recognition software to get to a human being. I had forgotten to load the Gigabyte drivers. And when I attempted to load the drivers, the DVD player would not open or stay open. And after I klugged that problem, I was told by my PC that Office 2007 could not be loaded w/o Win XP Service Pack 2 or better. So I went to MS' web site and downloaded Service Pack 2. And then, to highlight a "perfect" day, I discovered that the "C" drive that Win XP had highlighted and had convinced me to format was really my former "D" drive and I had lost all of the data on it, some 30 gigabytes of photos and video clips, an accumulation of over 10 years. So to say that I am satisfyed with the outcome is an overstatement

 

[Mongox]

Man, I'm so sorry. Really easy to get drives mixed up when partitioning and formatting. I thought you were going to physically move the drive(s) to another computer and back them up?

 

[vishal7]

Hello,
I am seeking to buy OCZ 4GB (2X2048) DDR2 800 Mhz but its not available in the local market. Can anyone suggest me where to find it in New Delhi, INDIA or where to buy it on internet??