Why won't it work with sticks of memory

[Ciz]

My system will either not boot up into normal operating mode or it boots up and sooner or later crashes ONLY when I have 2 sticks of 512M memory installed. The system will boot up into safe mode with no associated problems. I have tried both normal and dual channel configurations but always with the same result in normal mode ... blue screen, different messages, etc.

Place any one of the sticks in any of the recommended DIMM slos switch on and hey presto no problems.... I have a bootable stable system.

I've used Memtest 86 and both sticks seperately and they check out fine. But them both in and there are a shedful of errors.

Question is what is causing this to occur? Is it the nvidia driver (because there is no problem in safe mode) or is there some hardware incompatability???

Latest nforce drivers are installed but the results are the same with both the latest drivers from Gigabyte and those from NVidia.

System Details:
MB: GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev2
CPU: AMD +3200 Barton 400FSB
Graphics: Radeon 9800 Pro
PS: Enermax 460W
Memory: AData 512 M PC400 x2

[saturnotaku]

I would say it's a bad memory controller on the motherboard. I had problems with an Intel system that would do the exact same thing with 2 sticks of RAM installed. Replaced the board, presto - all problems went away.

[Ciz]

Thanks for the info I suspected it might be a hardware fault but hoped it was a software problem.

Further tests confirmed that the problem was hardware related and the board has been RMA'd and is winging its way back to the supplier.

[latinmike]

Thanks for the info I suspected it might be a hardware fault but hoped it was a software problem.

Further tests confirmed that the problem was hardware related and the board has been RMA'd and is winging its way back to the supplier.

glade you found the problem better luck w/your new mobo :cool: