ECS G31T-M7 motherboard RAM problems (get your RAM speeds right!)

4 Responses to “ECS G31T-M7 motherboard RAM problems (get your RAM speeds right!)”

1. Pedro Hin says:
   

   I had a brain teaser this week as well. Customer has a laptop (small local office of a larger national company) with all of the corporate domain lockdown bells and whistles.

   The parent company just rolled out a McAfee whole-drive encryption solution. Now the laptop shuts down cold just after system startup. Their corporate IT guys say there is no way that this is a software problem.

   When I get the laptop, I did notice a LSASS error dialog on screen just a split second before the laptop dumps. I saw this a few times so I am sure it has something to do with software. A few google searches send me on the path of a SYSTEM registry hive problem. ok, so it could be software problem caused by bad memory. I replaced their memory with a spare stick I have and the problem persists.

   I call their IT guy who links me to an ISO image of a McAfee rescue CD, and they give me the passwords and daily passcode which allows me to view the filesystem from a PE environment. I boot from this, and run a scandisk, but I don’t want to replace the registry with a backup hive since a bunch of software was just added.

   Customer (and their IT guys) are reluctant to allow me to decrypt the drive and remove McAfee to see if the problem goes away.

   So I insert another drive, and load XP-Pro with a bunch of apps that I think will slow the system down and tax the CPU. The system seems rock-solid.

   Then I decided to REALLY tax the system (it is a 4 year old HP NC6220) and load Vista. Sure enough, the laptop just shuts down when Vista installer is decompressing files.

   Pull the keyboard, and sure enough, the CPU heat sink had been re-entered at some point recently as I saw a fresh coating of cooling paste. I clean and repaste the heat sink, and reseat it.

   Now I try to reload Vista again, and it proceeds much farther into the install.

   I put the original HDD in, boot it, run as many apps as I can think of, and the system is now stable.

   The lesson here is to be aware of recent changes that might have been a factor, but to stick to trying standard troubleshooting steps before moving on to the new stuff. Had this been a little old lady bringing her 7 year old gateway into the shop with the sane symtoms, I would have gone right to the CPU area and checked the fan / heat sink area.

   July 13th, 2009 at 1:28
2. Computer Help says:
   

   That an interesting problem Pedro.

   To stress a CPU, I use something called cpu burn-in.

   On dual core systems, I run it twice, on quad cores, I run it 4 times.

   It really stresses the cpu.

   I use memtest for RAM, and the hyperspace screen saver (by Terry Welsh) for the video card.

   July 13th, 2009 at 1:45
3. independent says:
   

   The real problem of ur board is YOU!…. before u install make sure u read the manual of ur board to prevent any problems….. doing without knowing is the very BIG one problem

   October 30th, 2009 at 12:04
4. Computer Help says:
   

   Hi Independent.

   Thats right, the problem is me.

   If I had to read the manual, then I’d end up charging $2000 to fix each computer…

   Its a lot faster to assume that motherboards will work reasonably (and most do), and not have to worry about CPU types, RAM combinations, video and screen incompatibilities, etc, etc.

   Shortcuts: we all take them, but some are more dangerous than others.

   October 30th, 2009 at 14:07

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