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Problem description: I recently bought 4 sticks of 8gb 2133 DD3 RAM to replace the 2 4gb 1600 DDR3 sticks I originally had in my computer. After installing all four in the motherboard and starting up the computer, the computer went through POST with no problem (32gb detected, RAM underclocked to 1600 but meh, better safe than sorry) then I got to the first Windows loading screen (black with a blue windows logo) and the HDD loaded for 2 seconds before going quiet and the computer moved no further. After some time white dots appeared under the logo and spin but nothing else happened. After 3 restarts I get the default 'checking windows for errors' message at the bottom of the first loading screen but it still has the same '2 seconds of HDD activity and then nothing happens' problem. Attempted fixes: I have tested all 4 ram sticks and all 4 ram slots individually and windows 10 loads fine and, besides, this is after the POST screen so I don't think there's any hardware issues. I have also tested it with 2 sticks (in DDR slots 0 and 1 and then in slots 2 and 3) and 3 sticks (slots 0, 1 and 2) and it works fine. I have even tried 2 sticks of 8gb and 2 sticks of my old 4gb (24gb) and 3 8gb sticks and one old 4gb stick (28gb total) and windows 10 loads with no problem in both instances. I have tried creating a recovery USB (doesn't load) and I have tried restarting into safe mode from msconfig (doesn't load). The problem doesn't appear to be that windows freezes or crashes, but rather that windows expects something to happen which never does, so the loading screen remains up indefinitely. In other words, the problem seems to be that Windows just doesn't like 32Gb of RAM! Recent changes: Beyond the obvious RAM changes, no other changes have been made, all four sticks are of the same make, model and speed (see system specs below) -- Operating system: Windows 10 Home edition 64-bit. System specs: Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.40Ghz RAM: 2 kits of 2 x 8Gb Kingston Hyper X Beast 2133 DDR3 RAM PSU: 400W PSU (Can't remember the specific make) Video Card: Nvidia Geforce GTX 550 Ti HDD: 1 Tb Samsung HD103SJ 7200rpm SATA drive (windows' HDD) and 1Tb Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm SATA drive DVD Drive: TSST Corp Dvd reading/writer drive (no idea of any other info of the DVD drive beyond that) All BIOS settings are running at either default/auto or underclocked speeds. URLs given to what I think are most relevant in this spec, but if anyone would like links to other hardware parts i'll be happy to find them! Location: UK I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes, google found two other forum threads with similar problems here and here but both peter out after a few posts with no resolution. I tried Microsoft tech support and they were beyond useless (what I suspect is just a chat bot which just said 'it's bad RAM' over and over). Any ideas? I'd rather not have to throw away a perfectly good RAM stick (or two). 
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Jul 2, 2016 18:12
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 19:41 |
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400W PSU is on the lower end. How old is it? How long have you let it sit with the white dots before rebooting? You might want to give it more time. Latin Pheonix posted:Any ideas? I'd rather not have to throw away a perfectly good RAM stick (or two). Make sure you're using the latest motherboard BIOS.
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Jul 2, 2016 23:37
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Zogo posted:400W PSU is on the lower end. How old is it? Yeah it is, but it should still be sufficient, it's about a year old, I bought it when I changed my computer case a year ago. I've checked the voltages in the BIOS and it doesn't make a difference what voltage I set the RAM to (it defaults to 1.5v, I've tried up to 1.65v) as it still gets stuck in the same screen. quote:How long have you let it sit with the white dots before rebooting? You might want to give it more time. The first time I thought that maybe I had coincided the RAM upgrade with a windows update, so I left it on that screen for about an hour and a half with no activity from the hard disk. quote:Make sure you're using the latest motherboard BIOS. I'll give this a try and let you know if it makes any difference.[EDIT] Nope, but at least I have a shiny new BIOS now  .
Nanako the Narc fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Jul 3, 2016 |
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Jul 3, 2016 12:55
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Latin Pheonix posted:The first time I thought that maybe I had coincided the RAM upgrade with a windows update, so I left it on that screen for about an hour and a half with no activity from the hard disk. It sounds crazy but I might try leaving it on overnight sometime and seeing if it does anything.
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Jul 3, 2016 23:34
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It's a bit difficult sleeping next to it, but i might leave it on while i'm at work tomorrow morning and see if it's running after about 10 hours of loading time.
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Jul 4, 2016 21:32
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Yeah no joy after leaving it on all day, but while at work someone in the IT department pointed me to this thread. One of the people in that thread suggests switching on the onboard video card and setting it to use the maximum amount of RAM available. Someone responded that this worked for them and they have pretty much the exact same motherboard as I do, so I'm going to try this out when I get the chance. It could be that the motherboard simply has an inherent flaw and that causes it to hang when it has 32gb of ram installed and the integrated video card is disabled.
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Jul 6, 2016 00:01
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Yeah all the symptoms are pointing to a BIOS bug to me, that could be a workaround.
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Jul 6, 2016 01:32
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 19:41 |
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It works!!! I installed the full 32gb, put the onboard graphics to 'always on' and maxed out the memory available and it still wouldn't start. I then went back into the bios, set the onboard graphics to be off unless there's no PCIE card, set the memory to the lowest level and windows loaded!!!! For some reason windows didn't detect a processor for the first 5 minutes and was really slow, but it now sees the processor and all 32gb of RAM and is back to normal speed. Thanks for the suggestions everyone! 
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Jul 6, 2016 20:47
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