Project Reality Forums

Okay so here is what happened. I was happily loading a PR map, when all of a Sudden the system rebootet. I guess my Soundcard popped out, partially which caused the system to reboot. Now whenever I try to reboot the system with my ATI HD 5850 inserted, the system reboots during the loading process, I get a brief stopscreen but only for a second. In safemode sometimes it works, sometimes it reboots there as well.

If Load Windows XP the system boots fine with the HD5850 and the games run fine, so the Hardware is okay. If I boot Windows 7 with my onboard card the boot is flawless. I assume there is some kind of conflict, so I wanted to try to reinstall the drivers, but have to purge them first.

If the problem sounds familiar I am open to other suggestions too.

turn off PC.
unplug power cable and video cable.
ground yourself.
open PC case.
remove the hd5850.

plug in power cable.
plug in monitor to onboard video.
boot to win7.

You now have two options:
This is preferred:
1. Driver Sweeper from Guru3d.
Best too for that job and it is completely free!
Guru3D - Driver Sweeper
install.
DriverBackup! | Free Security & Utilities software downloads at SourceForge.net
install.
run drvback, backup your graphics adapters drivers, to be safe.

run drivesweeper
delete ALL (both) graphics adapters, including onboard video.
screen will go black or flicker for a moment, screen should switch to 800x600 or something ridiculously low.
shutdown.
on reboot, new hardware wizard will pop up, allow it to run to reinstall onboard graphics.
shutdown.
remove power cable, video cable,
install HD card
(not sure if you should plug the video cable into onboard or HD at this point, probably plug it in to HD58XX card.)
reboot
new hardware wizard will pop up, do NOT allow it to run.
manually start the ATI drivers/CCC installation program.



This is manual way, and leaves some traces in registry and drivers:
2.
Download or be prepared with your new ATI drivers and CCC install program.
go to My computer, right click, select manage
in left column, select device manager.
find Display adapters, uninstall all of them, including your onboard graphics adapter.
screen will go black or flicker for a moment, screen should switch to 800x600 or something ridiculous.
shutdown.
on reboot, new hardware wizard will pop up, allow it to run to reinstall onboard graphics.
shutdown.
remove power cable, video cable,
install HD card
reboot
new hardware wizard will pop up, do NOT allow it to run.
manually start the ATI drivers/CCC installtion program.

For the stop screen (BSOD) you can deactivate the automatic reboot (Automatic Restart Windows 7 - How To Disable the Automatic Restart on System Failure in Windows 7) and/or you should be able to find your BSOD message in the "event viewer" or "reliablitity monitor".

the stops were random and different.

Turns out it was just bad ram. Now I have to get by with 4 gigabyte, like some kind of Nazi War Criminal.

Its even more odd than I thought. The Corsair ram only seems to return errors in Memtester86 and crash in windows when the HD 5850 is plugged in. With the onboard graficcard the Ram tests out fine and does not crash either.

If I run the HD 5850 with other ram the ram is fine and the HD 5850 runs fine too. Its only if I use my corsair ram and the HD 5850 toegether that I get errors in memtester86 and crashes in windows. I have no clue on why that might be.

Maybe it's a motherboard compatibility issue?
What motherboard do you use?
Check to see if your manufacturer released any driver or BIOS updates that have to do with memory issues.

whatshisname55 is on the right track here, we on the forum can't really help you until we get info on the following:
motherboard manufacturer and model, and revision number.
motherboard BIOS number/revision.
graphic cards manufacturer and model, and revision number.
graphics card Firmware revision.
Does the HD 5850 have a separate power cable from the PowerSupplyUnit?
Give us info on your PSU, manufacturer and model, advertised Watts and revision number.

How are you running Memtest86? From BIOS boot option, from inside windows, from bootable DVD?from USBdrive?

So, could be motherboard physical problem, motherboard BIOS, graphics card physical problem, graphics card firmware/bios problem. Could also be a problem with your PSU not providing enough power when the power usage of the HD5850 is added to the load.

Hope this helps narrow it down, please post back , we'll help as we can.

And to add on top of that, you should get same type and density ram sticks. Especially if you OC, and since you have onboard GPU i assume you have cheaper mainboard, so it all comes together in the end.

Okay Ill recap.

I have an Asus M4a78pro an HD 5850 from Saphire, 4 Gigabyte of Mushkin ram, which I have the longest and 4 gigs of Corsair ram, which I have since September toether with an phenom be 720 X3 CPu. The bios of the mainboard seems to be 02.61. The Bios Version of the Graficcard is 012.011.000.006. I did not overclock my system of GPU.
I have 2 HDs one dvd Burner a Soundcard and an array of USB devices, which arent connected right now. Its powered by the Sharkoon SHA550 which has 500 Watt (550 peak).

I have been running my system fine without crashes so far. The only thing I installed before running PR the day my issues started was winamp. After PR was almost done loading the map it crashed and restarted and I get bluescreens since, sometimes right away, sometimes after a while, even after I purged all the drives and was running the graficcard without a driver. Bluescreens happend in Safemode too.

When I tested for the ram, I swapped out the ram, always using the first 2 banks for my 4 gig Mushkin and Corsair kits.

Now I have Mushkin ram, Corsair ram Windows 7 Windows XP my radeon 5850 and onboard grafics. The only combination that gives me trouble is my HD5850 booting with Windows 7 when Corsairram is installed, then I get a stopscreen after a while. If I swap out any of the 3 everything is fine. I can use the corsairram toegether with my hd5850 under windows XP and run Splinter cell just fine.

Memtester86, which boots before the operating system, likewise only finds errors in the corsairram if my HD 5850 is installed and that right away, there are none if I use onboard grafics, but I dont know if that is something new, because I did not test the ram prior. Regardless after a reboot what I wrote above still applies, despite memtester finding like hundreds of thousands of errors I can boot and run win XP fine.



I just cant wrap my head around the reaon why only the combination of my corsairram, Windows 7 and my HD5850 is giving me trouble. Could the crash have affected the bios of my graficcard or something?

Cassius wrote:Memtester86, which boots before the operating system, likewise only finds errors in the corsairram if my HD 5850 is installed and that right away, there are none if I use onboard grafics, but I dont know if that is something new, because I did not test the ram prior. Regardless after a reboot what I wrote above still applies, despite memtester finding like hundreds of thousands of errors I can boot and run win XP fine.



I just cant wrap my head around the reaon why only the combination of my corsairram, Windows 7 and my HD5850 is giving me trouble. Could the crash have affected the bios of my graficcard or something?

Onboard GFX will use a fraction of your RAM for GFX-RAM ("shared memory"). This portion is probably deducted in bios. The RAM check will only check the RAM that is not allocated to GFX. That would mean that with 4GB -> 3.75GB RAM + 256MB GFX-RAM only the 3.75GB are checked and the 256MB are not ... leading to the conclusion that especially that "shared memory" section of the RAM is broken.

Therefore I would conclude that you are right with the assumption that your Corsair RAM is broken, the HD5850 would be OK.


Different OS use RAM differently ... Win7 seems to use that corrupted section more often at critical times than WinXP (probably because it also needs more RAM to start with).

Also a broken BIOS can cause random issues like this... reset your BIOS settings to default or fail-safe settings to see if it is the BIOS (also do a BIOS update as suggested above).

I opened under Windows XP copies of Doxbox till I had only 1 gig of ram left and the system told me it was running low on memory. Both systems run without virtual memory.

I swapped the ram and that seems to have fixed it. What you wrote above makes sense, but it still does not explain why I get tons of errors under memtester86 (like 500.000), which boots from CD before any OS, with Corsair and the HD5850 installed but none with the onboardgrafik and corsair. Very curious.

By the way anybody interested in buying a corsair ram kit? Tested with Memtester86 no Errors .

You don't get errors when you use the onboard graphics because the faulty memory is allocated to the graphics, so memtest ignores it.

whatshisname55 wrote:You don't get errors when you use the onboard graphics because the faulty memory is allocated to the graphics, so memtest ignores it.

Okay makes sense. If Corsair ram craps out on me after 6 months I just dont know what to buy anymore. The ram had no heatsink and was pretty close to 2 hard drives (almost toutching the bay) might that have something to do with it?

Or could it have been fake ram? I bought the ram off Amazon, but not Amazon directly, one of the stores listed by them.

Have you tried installing the Video card, and putting the Corsair in slot 3 and 4, leaving RAM slot 1 and 2 empty, and then running memtest?

Also, I suggest you label the Corsair sticks now... stick A and stick B, you might try placing stick A in slot 1 and stick B in slot 2, testing. If fails, put A in 2 and B in 1, retest. If fails, Put A in 1, take B out of 2. retest. and again if fail, Put B in 1, leave A out of 2, retest.

Boring Boring and tedious testing, but will eliminate the possibility of a motherboard issue.


Both are just as likely.

If you have access to any other PC's for a few hours, burn a memtest86 CD or bootable thumbdrive, take the video card and RAM to that machine and test.

If it's only 6 months you can try to RMA the RAM, might as well get some new free RAM from Corsair for your troubles. HOwever, Corsair makes you pay for shipping, which might cost more than simply buying new RAM...

Warranty Info

whatshisname55 wrote:You don't get errors when you use the onboard graphics because the faulty memory is allocated to the graphics, so memtest ignores it.

Nice, I wish I would have your ability to wrap things up like this.