Memory Size Wrong on Boot

[Maul555]

Ive got a bit of a head scratcher here. First some background;

I was on a quest to upgrade my storage server. Picked up a Pentium III 1ghz for cheap along with a stick of pc133 256mb. This computer was running a PIII 550 overclocked to 616, with 768 mb of ram.

I threw the new processor and ram in there, and decided to add a pci bus tweak at the same time, then i turned it on and prayed lol. I allready figured out that the pci bus tweak was the cause of my system instability. But now i have wierd ram problems. The computer came up fine the first time i set it right, and was fine for hours afterwards. But after about 6 hours or so the system will hard freeze, upon reboot it reports a ram size that is a good 2 to 3 times below what it should be. If i restart a few times, I will get sizes anywhere from 2xx, to 6xx mb. If i turn it off for a few minutes, fiddle with the ram a bit, it usualy goes back to reporting its full size again, and will run find untill its next freeze where it will go back to reporting a lower number of ram. I have played with it a bit, switching out pieces of ram. I thought i had a problem stick pointed out and i took it out. But now its back to the same problem again.

This old board is fully loaded. Current specs:

GA-6BXE (motherboard)
Slot 1 Pentium III 1ghz
768mb of ram (in 4 slots)

AGP - Geforce 4 MX420 64mb Video card
PCI - USB 2.0 Card
PCI - Sound Card
PCI - SATA/IDE Raid Card
PCI - 56k Modem
PCI - 10/100mbps Nic
ISA - 10mbps Nic

3 IDE HDD's
1 IDE CDROM
1 SATA HDD
1 External USB CDROM

---------------

This computer has always been the ol workhorse. Always stable and rock solid. Im scratching my head as to how to stop it from going ram crazy...

 

[jay_bo]

try puting 512mb in the 1st slot and 256mb in the 2nd slot thats how i solved my ram prob, if u have dual channel. Try doing a memory test and make sure ur memory is the ryt type for your motherboard.

 

[Maul555]

Well, i dont have any extra 512 sticks lying around. Besides, the mobo will accept a max of 256 per stick. It has 2 256's and 2 128's in it. I have a 256 out of it, the one i thought was the problem, but may not be now..

Here is a pic:

 

[jay_bo]

the picture isnt really clear y dnt u try to put memory in each time and see if the right amount comes up. it could be that you have too much memory for your motherboard to hold

 

[Maul555]

It can hold a max if 1 gig of ram by using 256 x 4 sticks... I have tried that allready, it put em in 1 at a time untill i had 768 again, turned it on, ran for many hours fine, then hard froze again.. i rebooted and its started to give different ram values..

 

[jay_bo]

try running it on 512mb and keep changing them 1 by 1 if it freezes, untill it works fine

 

[Maul555]

well, i dont have any 512mb sdram sticks. I have that for ddr, but this board doesnt take ddr. Besides, if i droped a 512 stick in there, it would just report it as 256 anyways...

 

[jay_bo]

yea you have three 256mb, so put 2 of them in too make 512mb. Or do you have one 512mb and 1 256mb.Anyway just put 512mb doesnt matter how many sticks, n leave some out so when it freeze swap 1 with 1 that is out. it could be one stick causing the prob

 

[Maul555]

ill try it....