(the bootable CD) and check for bad sectors.įor Western Digital drives download the WdDiag. If you have a new Seagate hard drive the very next thing would be to download Seagate's Seatools Test your drive using the drive manufacture's utility. Note: Hard drive reliability has gone way down in the last 18 months. Īnywhere from 5 to 25%, (depending on the manufacture and model) of new hard drives are defective. The speed (Frequency) your memory is running at. Note: RAM option will show number of slots, DRAM Timing, OS, CPU, RAM, Motherboard, Graphics, Hard Drive, Optical Drive, Audio, Peripherals, Network.
It provides System/computer Information in detail: If you don't know your drives make and model, Try "Speccy",
Let it run for as long as you can: 2,4,6,8 or more hours (at least 3 full passes), if no errors by then your ram is OK. Sticks are bad or the SPD values in the BIOS are correct. This runs from a boot disk or CD and should eliminate or confirm if one or more of your memory Note: If you are OverClocking or use any automatic overclocking or power saving BIOS features, start out by disabling them: Intel EIST, Turbo Mode, Cool and Quite and drop back to the stock speed as a starting point.ĭisconnect any other (additional) internal hard drives and external USB devices.Ĭheck for any loose hard drive power or SATA cables, Graphics card or other power cables. Set of test utilities for DIY computer builders: Later on see if you can bump up / Overclock the CPU to 2.64GHz and run the same set of tests. Since you have a Q6600 the default is 2.4GHz.
Install Windows 7 (Keyless Install) and see if your system can pass all of the following tests. It is crazy to me that it behaves differently if only the amount of ram is changed.
I have invested a good bit of money now between the cost of Windows 8, plus 16GB of ram I have purchased trying to make this work. I would really like to run Windows 8 on this machine but I cannot seem to find a solution. So this seems to be something with the Windows 8 boot loader, although I can't imagine what it would be.Īll of my hardware checks out fine, will install older versions of windows, and will even install and boot Windows 8 as long as I have less than 4GB of memory installed. Everything installed perfectly and the system sees all 8GB of memory.
The installer also stops at the teal windows logo splash screen if I have more than 3GB installed.Īs a trial I ran memtest86 overnight with all 4 sticks installed with no errors.Īs another trial I installed Windows 7 on the system with all 4 sticks installed. I tried to reinstall Windows 8, but found the same behavior with the installer.
Thinking this might be some sort of ram incompatibility, I purchased more ram at a premium that was specifically listed on the motherboards approved memory compatibility list. I was able to boot with all 4 of my new sticks as long as I only had one installed. However, if I installed 2x2GB sticks or more the system would hang at the splash screen.
Stick installed, or if I mix and matched my new sticks with 1 of my old sticks up to 3GB. I tried various configurations and found that the system would boot if I only had 1 It would just stop at the teal windows splash screen logo and the indicator would spin forever. When my new ram arrived my system would not boot after installing new ram. Without a hitch but was obviously slow due to only having 2GB of ram. While waiting for my new ram to arrive, I installed Windows 8 on my machine with only 2GB of ram installed. Initially this system had only 2 GB of ram (1x2GB) I ordered 8GB ram so I could reach recommended requirements for Windows 8. I am having an odd issue that I cannot seem to resolve.