Vista Wouldn’t Boot After Upgrading Memory…
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Well, it’s been a while since I wrote in this blog! Sorry about that, but sometimes, I get busy - just like everybody else - and this month has been no exception - what with college and all, I hardly have time for sleep!
Anyway, today, I ran into a real headache trying to install additional RAM in my system. I purchased two 1x Gig modules to upgrade my system to 2GB of RAM, replacing the 2x 512 MB RAM Chips I had in it.
Well, with all things computer, and also all things Vista, I ran into problems as soon as I got done installing the new RAM chips…
After installing the chips, I started a reboot, and what do you know, the system wouldn’t boot… “Well, that’s great!” I thought, “maybe I got a bad RAM Chip or two…” Hmm… And I didn’t have my Vista disk on hand to see if I could fix the system that way, because I was at work.
Well, I booted into safe mode, and had no problems. So then I shut down and tried to reboot into normal mode. No dice. Maybe it was a bad RAM chip.
So, I rebooted into safe mode, and then brought up the start menu and typed in “mdsched” in the search bar and hit enter.
Here’s what it looks like when you do this:
When prompted, I selected “Restart now and Check for problems”. The system restarted and began to test the memory.
When this screen came up, I hit the F1 key to see the options, and changed the scan to “Extended”. Then I sat back and about 30 minutes later, I had my results - “No errors detected”. Well, it certainly appears like the memory is fine. On to the next thing. By this time, it was time to go home - so, I packed up my system, and headed home.
As soon as I got in the door, I set up the system, and tried a reboot. Nothing - then, I noticed the wireless network light and button were not working - normally during boot, the light comes on, indicating that the wireless network card is working properly. Not this time.
So I went and swapped out the new RAM for the old RAM, and sure enough, the system booted up fine, and the wireless network light was on, and I had connectivity. So, I shut down again, swapped the old out for the new again, and rebooted again. Again, there was NO wireless network light. “AH HA! - It might be a driver conflict with the new RAM!”. I rebooted into safe mode, and deleted the drivers for the wireless network card and then I rebooted into normal mode.
The system booted perfectly, and then stated that it had found new hardware (that would be the wireless network card). As I had not connected to my network using cable, I went ahead, plugged it in, and had Vista search for the drivers. No dice - I was connected to the internet, but Vista apparently didn’t have drivers for this wireless card.
Well, because this system is an older HP pavillion zd7000, I went and checked my download folder where I keep all my drivers, and sure enough, there was the driver software. I tried installing it, but it didn’t seem to work - as a matter of fact, the install hung at 27% and wouldn’t budge from there.
So, I brought up the task manager, killed the install program, and then went to the device manager to try and install it that way.
Once in the device manager, I found the Network card (indicated by an “exclamation” as having a problem), and then right clicked it and selected properties.
I then selected “Install drivers” and then selected “Browse my computer for driver software”. I browsed to where the driver software was located (the one that failed earlier). The drivers were there, and five minutes later, they were all installed.
Just one more thing to do: Reboot, and MAKE SURE that the driver re-install had indeed fixed my boot problem. It did! :)
I was once again up and running, with my wireless network card connecting to my LAN and the internet, and thus, allowing me to write another interesting (to me anyway) post in my blog!
Anyway, if you decide to upgrade your memory, be aware that there might be problems, even with something as simple as that… And always start looking for what is not working that should be working normally - besides the obvious!
Of course, some of you are wondering, would this have happened with Windows XP? Maybe. I don’t know. I suspect it might have, but there’s no guarantee. If you have an HP Pavillion zd7000, running Windows XP, and you use a broadcom 43xx b/g network card or similar, and you upgrade you memory, let me know how it goes! I’d certainly be interested.
Take care!
Blackwolf
[tags]Windows Vista, Memory, Will not boot, errors, wireless network, upgrading, RAM, blackwolf[/tags]
12 Comments
JJ
October 18th, 2007
at 6:39pm
Simple solution. Don’t use Vista, it’s crap!!
the oracle
October 18th, 2007
at 7:08pm
There is no driver for RAM, what was happening (most likely) is the system was allocating things differently due to the change in total memory.In your place, I would have reset the CMOS, which should have had the same results, in less time.
BlackWolf
October 18th, 2007
at 11:30pm
Oracle: You misunderstood: I know RAM doesn’t have “drivers”. The driver I am referring to is for my wireless card, and it was some how interfering with the RAM - I suspect that it was referring to memory addresses some how, for 1GB of RAM, and there was a conflict when more than 1GB of RAM was installed. Re-installing the driver for the card allowed it to reallocate what it required or was using, and that solved the problem. Resetting the CMOS would not have worked, as I already verified that the BIOS could see the RAM and was using it properly. The issue was ONLY occurring after Vista started loading - long after the BIOS had checked everything.
JJ: Have you even tried to use Vista? I used to have XP, and XP has had “issues” with hardware upgrades too!
the oracle
October 18th, 2007
at 11:51pm
Resetting the CMOS resets the various things like 1] what IRQ is allocated for what device 2] the size and placement of various other system BIOSs, such as video card and SCSI, and 3] the size and placement of the AGP or PCIe window - all of these are reset when the CMOS is reset, meaning the system re-assesses where to put things. It’s very likely that the NIC wasn’t being seen because of addresses being relocated. Reinstalling the driver caused the system to do a better search for the NIC hardware. The CMOS reset would have forced this same re-assessment.
BlackWolf
October 19th, 2007
at 12:05am
Oracle: Do you mean reset the BIOS? I’ve been building computers since 1992, and been programming since 1983, and I’ve never heard of “resetting the CMOS”, unless you are referring to what is normally called “resetting the BIOS” which is done by a jumper on some computers, done by removing the CMOS battery on others, and can’t be done on any laptops that I am aware of and certainly not on mine - which is a Pavillion zd7000. The only thing that you can change on a laptop with a locked down BIOS are a few things in the BIOS - you can’t reset it.
This was not a BIOS issue - the system saw the memory and the network card just fine, so long as I was not trying to boot to Vista. Another clue as to why Vista was having the problem, and not my BIOS (or CMOS as you called it), is that the light was working fine in Vista with 1Gig RAM. Upgrade to 2 Gig, and careful observation of the light, after POST, after Vista had finished loading all it’s drivers, and after Vista attempted to go to the GUI, was that the light would flicker on for the briefest of seconds, several times - like Vista was trying to load the driver or something, but couldn’t. Final clue that it was a driver problem: Re-installing the driver, after removing the old one, fixed the problem.
*nix Style Meet Max the Penguin
October 19th, 2007
at 2:12am
Plain and simple remedy, rm all and install Gentoo :P
BlackWolf
October 19th, 2007
at 2:33am
*nix: LOL! To be honest, I have tried other OS’s besides the Windows flavors, including most of the flavor’s of Linux. Even Linux has “issues”. And those include driver problems or hardware conflicts. Nothing is perfect.
Ken
October 22nd, 2007
at 5:11pm
I am having the same problem as you had, in upgrading the amount of RAM in the system. The only difference is its not the Network Card. Any ideas on how to locate the offending driver. (the memory is good)
Pedro
October 25th, 2007
at 10:07pm
I’m running a gigabyte 8n board with a gig of corsair RAM. I recently bought two more 1GB sticks. The modules are both good but for some unknown reason they won’t work together. I can fit my old RAM with a newer module but not the two new modules together. I’m on XP. The diagnostics screen loads and the RAM is all recognised but I don’t get to windows even in safe mode.
BlackWolf
October 26th, 2007
at 4:50am
Ken:
Sorry for the delay in response - but I live in S. Korea at the moment so I am between 13-18 hours ahead of you time wise.
Anyway: There are several things you can do to try to narrow this down.
It would help if I knew some things too - for example, I’m assuming that you are running Windows Vista on this machine since you didn’t specify otherwise - if not, then please let me know as the troubleshooting techniques are different for each OS. Also, what sort of machine is it? Laptop/Desktop? What hardware does it have? and so on.
Without this info, I can only say in general, the problems that you are experiencing are probably being caused by a network card, a sound/audio card, PCMCIA drivers, or your video card. It is possible that you are having problems due to something else, but it’s not possible to tell without more information - basically, nothing can be completely ruled out at this stage.
Also, have you checked to make sure you are installing the correct type of RAM for your system? IE: If you system uses DDR RAM, you are not trying to put DDR2 RAM in it. Are you mixing your RAM - that is, are you leaving in one chip and adding another chip that may have different specs? If so, try swapping the chips (if you can) to different slots/positions.
Since you say the RAM is good, I’m assuming that everything I just mentioned in the above paragraph has already been done, so on to the next step:
Can you boot into safe mode with the new RAM installed? If so, then you almost certainly have a driver problem or conflict of some sort.
While in safe mode, bring up the run dialog (Press and hold the windows key and the press the “R” key). Type in “msconfig” - no quotes. Once the System Configuration window opens up, click the “Boot” tab and enable and enable “OS boot information”.
When you reboot the next time, you will see a list of drivers being loaded. If at any point, the system hangs for more than a couple of minutes at this screen, then you can see what the last driver being loaded was. While this doesn’t mean 100% that this is the driver causing the problem, it does indicate at least where you should look to see where the problem might be hiding.
You should also enable “Boot Log” so that a log file will be generated during boot. If you can’t find a problem with the drivers as described above, go to the boot log and see what is failing to load properly.
Hope this helps!
BlackWolf
BlackWolf
October 26th, 2007
at 4:51am
Hi Pedro:
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.
Here’s what I believe is happening:
Since you are trying to run 3 sticks of RAM, and 2 are from one manuf. and 1 from the other, you are running into a conflict because of different speeds and specifications of the chips.
If I remember correctly, most motherboards (I can’t be completely certain of your situation since you didn’t give me the exact model number and Gigabyte has something like 20 or 30 motherboards that have 8n in them), esp. high end boards, need the memory installed in pairs - that is, if you have 2 or more memory sticks that are the same, they need to be placed in the memory slots that are on the same channel, while any odd stick gets put into the slot that is on a separate channel.
With three sticks of RAM, what you need to do, is look at the slots that the memory sticks go in. Two of them should be the same color (usually blue). Those two slots should be where the new memory goes, since they are the same. The other slot (usually black), should be where your older memory goes. This ensures that the paired sticks that are the same, are on the same channel together, while the odd stick is on a separate channel.
Note: The two slots that are on the same channel may not be right next to each other - so, if you have your old chip in the first memory slot and it’s blue, and then you tried to put 1 of your new sticks in the slot next to it, because it’s a different channel, it’ll work.
The moment that you try to put the 2nd new stick in the third channel, assuming it too is blue, you are now putting unmatched pairs on the same channel, and your system won’t boot, because it can’t figure out what the correct memory timings are.
By moving the old chip to the middle channel and the new chip to the 1st and last channel (ASSUMING you have only three slots) you should be able to overcome the problem you’ve been having.
As for Windows XP, it is fully capable of running up to 4 Gigs of RAM, so that should not be the cause of the problem you are having.
Hope that helps!
BlackWolf
Jim
November 13th, 2007
at 4:58am
Hello, I just managed to catch your thread and I think I may have a similar problem. Using Win XP Pro and OCZ 3200 DDR400 Dual Channel (512MB) for quite a while. Recently I bought another dual kit, OCZ 3200. Anyway I reboot, goes through the BIOS it sees the addtional 1gig, no problem, all looks good until it starts booting windows, right after the moving “eye” it restarts, a never ending loop. So I take out the additional memory, it recovers thankfully! Howver windows states it had to use the backup registry copy??(never seen this before) and that there was a device problem? but M/S had no information on the issue. Any futher thoughts? it doesn’t boot far enough along to see if it is a device issue, but device conflict was mentioned on recovery. Just seems funny in this day in age, so much for plug and play. I hope OCZ has the answer. Regards, Jim