Right here goes! I have the following system:- ASUS M2N32SLi 2 x 1Gig Crucial Ballistix PC6400 DDR2 Athlon64 5600 x2 Geforce 8800GTX Sata 500gig Western Digital IDE 320 Maxtor Sata Samsung Writer I built this system about 18 months ago, maybe less. I've been using it trouble free and must stress, with no overclocking! It's still quick enough for what i use it for at the mo. Recently i've been having strange things happen in Windows XP and put it down to installing far too much crap on it over the months and now it must be due for a wipe and start again. I rarely shut down the machine, but a couple of days ago I did and when i came to reboot, it failed to start. When trying to restart Is was given 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps. So. My motherboard is telling something is wrong, fair enough but what? I've looked through the manual for the motherboard and unless i've missed something, i can't find out what these beeps mean. On reading a couple of threads, i'm lead to believe it could be a Ram issue, but not 100% certain. So far i've done the logical things by taking things out and went right back to just processor and memory. I even removed the memory all together and got the same beeps, indicating to me that it must be a ram error message. I then put one of the sticks in slot A1 and the system started. Then tried again and then along came back the beeps and it wouldn't boot. So i then tried the other stick in slot A1. I still got 1 long and 2 short beeps. I then moved the same stick to slot B1 and now the system started and is now up and running. So now I'm able to type this thread and now very scared to turn the machine off! Initially i thought I could be a faulty DIMM but i've manged to get the system going with both sticks, individually. The only thing I haven't disturbed in the machine, is the processor. Should I remove and re-seat? I'm running the original system bios, so I believe. But I've always been a believer of the saying, if it aint broke, don't fix it. It's been running perfectly up until now. Any ideas would be hugely appreciated, Cheers, Chris
I have the same mobo and have had this issue myself. you are correct, it is a RAM issue. You should upgrade your bios. the bios upgrades for this mobo have at times in the revision history addressed RAM compatability issues. I believe that the newest bios update is v.1903. Also after upgrading your BIOS, remove both DIMMS and install one at a time. run MEMTEST upon each DIMM. This will let you know if any of your RAM DIMMS are going bad. After doing this, write back and let me know how things are going.
Thanks for the reply. It's helped me discover the problem. I updated to the latest bios as you suggested and it now run with only the one DIMM. It turns out I have a a faulty DIMM, by trying to reboot with DIMMs in different slots. So now I'm left with one lonely Dimm. I've been searching and found that another pair of these DIMM are only £37! How cheap has memory gone since i last bought some! The question is, do i run 3gig of Ram or Just 2gig in dual channel? Would i see any benifit by doing that? Thanks for you help
Well I went and bought a new pair of OCZ Reaper X 6400 4-4-3. The ones with the big aluminium heatsinks attached. For around £90 with postage, i thought why not have 4gig of posh ram. Now i have the problem of my pc only recognising one stick of ram. I can put a single stick in to any slot and the pc will boot up, i'm running one of them now. As I put them both in the pc doesn't register the ram! I know other people are usig this ram on my motherboard. So has anyone any ideas? I thought this would have sorted the problem, only it seems to have created more!
Did you by chance overclock your old memory with the system bios? I did and had to replace my mobo. I am not too familiar with OCZ memory. I can say that I would try one dimm at a time. ie, boot up with one dimm, then two, etc. Also you can try this..reset your bios to factory settings, then start out with two dimms. if that works then try all four. if that works then adjust your system bios for the proper speed and memory config according to OCZ for this mobo. Here is a link to OCZ techsupport forums for the M2N32 Sli Deluxe: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/search.php?searchid=602321
I've never overclocked my memory before as my system is still quick enough for my liking. My next port of call is try try some memory diagnostics tests. It could well be my motherboard that is at fault but no idea how to check that. Any ideas out there?
