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Getting there



 
 
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  #31  
Old March 8th 20, 02:28 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Getting there

*******

You should be able to test the sticks, one stick at a time.
I do tests that way, so the test result ("which DIMM is bad")
is unambiguous.

The following is for "thoroughness of testing".

My favorite way to test, is two sticks in single channel mode,
so that the "upper stick" is 100% tested, while the "lower stick"
is 99% tested. You swap the two sticks and repeat the memtest
single pass, so that the stick now sitting in the high slot
gets 100% tested too. This is mainly for stuck-at faults, to make
sure any 640K reserved locations don't harbor bad RAM.

Don't forget proper etiquette when RAM testing. Power
off, wait 60 seconds (or until the green LED goes out),
before pulling the RAM sticks and pushing them in again.
That's to make sure there is no power in the slot.

*******

This is what I'm running at the moment. I used to have four
sticks of Kingston CAS6 (that failed). All I could find
at the time in a CAS5 was this stuff, so that's what is
in the machine at the moment. Four 2GB sticks. The
Northbridge is probably the flakiest part of the setup now.
I think I was pretty lucky to get this (I might have
asked at the computer store and they still had some). Usually
what happens, is after a memory generation is "Done", all
the CAS5 disappears and only some crappy CAS6 is left.
It's pretty hard to find fancy memory ten years after
the motherboard came out. By crappy, the Kingston I
bought ran abnormally hot, and the voltage wasn't
over stock. I even added a cooling fan over the
RAM just in case, for the Kingston stuff. The Corsair
right now is cooler and isn't scaring me on temps.

It doesn't look like it's still in circulation.

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Catego...N2X4096-6400C5

Sometimes, the chipset is also a limitation. It's possible
the X48 can't run below CAS4. That's if you could find
some RAM that low. So eventually, the timing inside the
Northbridge doesn't allow "cranking CAS to zero". It has
a limit too (a minimum CAS value).

Paul
Thanks Paul. Upgraded to Q9650 CPU and renewed thermal compound on Intel
heat sink fan. As before, first memtest failed. Now running second
memtest. Samsung 4GB modules are cheap. Time to buy more from eBay for
total 16GB RAM memory.


Q9650 CPU works OK. When I set up the SSDs' SATA and power cables, I ran
into trouble. Win10 tried to boot. It failed because it did not find
GTX950 HDMI display driver, even though those drivers were enabled last
time Win10 booted. Win10 said the PCI VGA was not compatible with Win10.
I may have a troubleshooting CDROM somewhere. Still running Memtest.


This should not stop Windows 10.

Windows (as is traditional) has a built-in VESA driver. All video
cards have a standard legacy interface, which the Microsoft Basic
Display Adapter driver can see. The VESA style driver usually limits
the resolution to a safe value - this avoids lawsuits that happened
during the "non-multisync" era, where monitors were ruined
by OSes using too high a resolution setting. The companies have
never forgotten this, and to this day limit themselves to 1024x768
for example. And yes, a 4:3 resolution looks strange on a
16:9 monitor :-)

Is there more than one display device in the computer ? Would
the second display device be 1024x600 resolution ? There has
got to be some explanation for why the MBDA driver did not
cut in and bring up the system.

I can bring up Windows 10 with an FX5200 in the machine. And
the FX5200 doesn't have a Windows 10 driver.

Paul


Thanks Paul. BartPE is limited by lack of drivers. I think I should make a
bootable Win10 USB stick and use Win10 to update BIOS. Then maybe my copy of
Win10 on SSD will boot.


  #32  
Old March 8th 20, 02:30 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Getting there

I found a utility in BIOS to upgrade BIOS version. I pointed it to an
.exe file I placed on BartPE. It failed. If I can find a .dat for cmos
it might work for me.


Trying to mount CDROM, I discovered I mounted CDROM drive upside down.
Later.


Attempt to upgrade BIOS program to F9 failed.


There is no F9 for my board. That's why it failed.


  #33  
Old March 8th 20, 05:27 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default Getting there

Norm Why wrote:

Thanks Paul. BartPE is limited by lack of drivers. I think I should make a
bootable Win10 USB stick and use Win10 to update BIOS. Then maybe my copy of
Win10 on SSD will boot.


A lot of the time, BIOS flashers are MSDOS ones.

In some cases, by having a FAT32 partition and hard drive
on the machine, flash images larger than a floppy can contain,
can be stored on the hard drive instead.

A few flashers are Windows ones. But you have to be careful, as some
of those rely on networking, and you can be "half-flashed"
when the network connection drops and then you're bricked.
It's better if the BIOS file is locally staged first, before
the operation starts in such cases.

Some BIOS flasher operations, are done by the BIOS itself.
The reason the BIOS can do it, is the BIOS image is "shadowed"
to RAM, leaving the BIOS chip free to be re-flashed.

And the previous owner may have selected a certain version
of flashed image on purpose.

The last two computers I built up, I didn't change the
flash version on them. They already seemed to be working fine.

The flasher program can compare the release number scheme, to
what is already in the flash chip. Sometimes a flash fails,
because you're using the wrong family of chip image, and there is
some sort of basic check it does for sanity. With no guarantees
that such a check works properly, but it is one more check before
the operation goes forward. There's a field down near the end
of the ROM image it's using to check. Occasionally, it takes
a special version of the flasher program, to "flash backwards"
and restore an older version to the motherboard.

Paul
  #34  
Old March 8th 20, 08:52 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Getting there


A lot of the time, BIOS flashers are MSDOS ones.

In some cases, by having a FAT32 partition and hard drive
on the machine, flash images larger than a floppy can contain,
can be stored on the hard drive instead.

A few flashers are Windows ones. But you have to be careful, as some
of those rely on networking, and you can be "half-flashed"
when the network connection drops and then you're bricked.
It's better if the BIOS file is locally staged first, before
the operation starts in such cases.

Some BIOS flasher operations, are done by the BIOS itself.
The reason the BIOS can do it, is the BIOS image is "shadowed"
to RAM, leaving the BIOS chip free to be re-flashed.

And the previous owner may have selected a certain version
of flashed image on purpose.

The last two computers I built up, I didn't change the
flash version on them. They already seemed to be working fine.

The flasher program can compare the release number scheme, to
what is already in the flash chip. Sometimes a flash fails,
because you're using the wrong family of chip image, and there is
some sort of basic check it does for sanity. With no guarantees
that such a check works properly, but it is one more check before
the operation goes forward. There's a field down near the end
of the ROM image it's using to check. Occasionally, it takes
a special version of the flasher program, to "flash backwards"
and restore an older version to the motherboard.

Paul


Thanks Paul.

I've found many useful BIOS settings. USB keyboard is enabled by default so
I enabled USB mouse in BIOS. There is a BIOS setting to select display; PCI
VGA or PCIe graphics. I selected the latter and now I no longer need the
1600x900 VGA monitor. PCIe graphics is a boon for Win10, which will not work
with PCI VGA. Win10 boots but has problems not yet resolved. F8 safe mode
may be enabled, I don't remember.

A bootable Win10 USB stick may or may not work; that is trial and error. I
would need to buy a suitable USB thumb drive and create the bootable Win10
USB stick in the library which has reliable WiFi.

As soon as possible, I need to install all Gigabyte device drives on my
Win10. Being correctly configured for the new hardware would make my Win10
boot reliably.

Later.


  #35  
Old March 8th 20, 09:59 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default Getting there

Norm Why wrote:
A lot of the time, BIOS flashers are MSDOS ones.

In some cases, by having a FAT32 partition and hard drive
on the machine, flash images larger than a floppy can contain,
can be stored on the hard drive instead.

A few flashers are Windows ones. But you have to be careful, as some
of those rely on networking, and you can be "half-flashed"
when the network connection drops and then you're bricked.
It's better if the BIOS file is locally staged first, before
the operation starts in such cases.

Some BIOS flasher operations, are done by the BIOS itself.
The reason the BIOS can do it, is the BIOS image is "shadowed"
to RAM, leaving the BIOS chip free to be re-flashed.

And the previous owner may have selected a certain version
of flashed image on purpose.

The last two computers I built up, I didn't change the
flash version on them. They already seemed to be working fine.

The flasher program can compare the release number scheme, to
what is already in the flash chip. Sometimes a flash fails,
because you're using the wrong family of chip image, and there is
some sort of basic check it does for sanity. With no guarantees
that such a check works properly, but it is one more check before
the operation goes forward. There's a field down near the end
of the ROM image it's using to check. Occasionally, it takes
a special version of the flasher program, to "flash backwards"
and restore an older version to the motherboard.

Paul


Thanks Paul.

I've found many useful BIOS settings. USB keyboard is enabled by default so
I enabled USB mouse in BIOS. There is a BIOS setting to select display; PCI
VGA or PCIe graphics. I selected the latter and now I no longer need the
1600x900 VGA monitor. PCIe graphics is a boon for Win10, which will not work
with PCI VGA. Win10 boots but has problems not yet resolved. F8 safe mode
may be enabled, I don't remember.

A bootable Win10 USB stick may or may not work; that is trial and error. I
would need to buy a suitable USB thumb drive and create the bootable Win10
USB stick in the library which has reliable WiFi.

As soon as possible, I need to install all Gigabyte device drives on my
Win10. Being correctly configured for the new hardware would make my Win10
boot reliably.

Later.


When Windows 10 is properly installed on a hard drive
or SSD, the driver installation is automatic.

The only exception here of note, is my Hauppauge TV tuner
does not have a driver on the Microsoft server. (This is
also a problem, coincidentally, when running Linux, but for
a different reason.)

*******

There is this option, but it didn't work properly when I tested it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go

*******

You can load a Windows 10 installer onto a USB stick, so that
you can install the OS on your hard drive. That uses WinPE for
as long as the installation first phase takes. The installer
also supports a Command Prompt window. In such a window you
can run CHKDSK or sfc /scannow, that wort of thing. You can
perform "offline maintenance" on an installed C: on the hard drive.

Make sure your hardware is fully tested, before wasting too
much time on Windows. If the hardware isn't healthy, Windows
won't stay healthy forever either.

Paul
  #36  
Old March 9th 20, 03:56 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Norm Why[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default Getting there

The last two computers I built up, I didn't change the
flash version on them. They already seemed to be working fine.

The flasher program can compare the release number scheme, to
what is already in the flash chip. Sometimes a flash fails,
because you're using the wrong family of chip image, and there is
some sort of basic check it does for sanity. With no guarantees
that such a check works properly, but it is one more check before
the operation goes forward. There's a field down near the end
of the ROM image it's using to check. Occasionally, it takes
a special version of the flasher program, to "flash backwards"
and restore an older version to the motherboard.

Paul


Thanks Paul.

I've found many useful BIOS settings. USB keyboard is enabled by default
so I enabled USB mouse in BIOS. There is a BIOS setting to select display;
PCI VGA or PCIe graphics. I selected the latter and now I no longer need
the 1600x900 VGA monitor. PCIe graphics is a boon for Win10, which will
not work with PCI VGA. Win10 boots but has problems not yet resolved. F8
safe mode may be enabled, I don't remember.

A bootable Win10 USB stick may or may not work; that is trial and error. I
would need to buy a suitable USB thumb drive and create the bootable Win10
USB stick in the library which has reliable WiFi.

As soon as possible, I need to install all Gigabyte device drives on my
Win10. Being correctly configured for the new hardware would make my Win10
boot reliably.

Later.


I managed to get into Win10 safe mode, somehow. I started running Gigabyte
driver install programs. When reboot could not be avoided, I rebooted into
Win10 and got the window for password. Now I am continuing with this
approach, before I install a WiFi dongle.

Not all Gigabyte utilities installed. I'll need the compatibility wizard for
Vista,

WiFi dongle plugged in. Updating and housekeeping. BIOS not yet updated.
Update is a real troubling mess. I seem to have F10 which means v1.0 BIOS.
I'll need to understand what v2.0 resolves. BIOS is only important at
bootup. But the BIOS has a lot of smart features.

Still downloading and housekeeping. My new GA-EP45-DS3L works. Q9650 and 8GB
RAM works. Win10 works. GTX950 works. MX330-X works. Some things that do
not work may require reinstallation. This is the end of the story, 'not with
a bang but with a whimper.


 




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