Vista killing my memory?

[Cassius]

For the second time shutting down Vista has caused one of my sticks of memory to die, and result in a failed POST. I very rarely shutdown my system, so I'm not sure if this would happen every time, and I don't want to test that theory, but have any of you heard of anything like this happening?

The exact symptom is that I say to shutdown, and then the screen fades to the kind of dark overlay mode and just sits there for a while, the first time it turned off, but this last time I had to manually shut it off with the power button. After this when I turn it back on the 1 stick of memory is dead. One thing I noticed was that once I got it back up, it said it had completed installing updates, so it appears it may of hung installing some update, but not positive.

Could this be a mobo/bios issue, or what? I'm really hoping someone knows of this and has a fix for me. Thanks for the input guys.

My system specs are:
Q6600 G0 @ 3.0GHz w/1.24V
Asus P5K-E
2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix PC6400 (now 1 gig)
eVGA 8800GTS 320MB @ 621/1005
Corsair 520HX
Windows Vista Business Edition

 

[kentsfield]

I really doubt that vista killed your ram. Is that even possible?

 

[JustaGeek]

Vista will not kill the memory. Even Orthos/Memtest will not.

Overclock, overvoltage, heat, faulty ICs - will.

 

[gingerstewart55]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
Vista will not kill the memory.

Sure it will...........didn't you get the memo that Vista is the devil incarnate and will spontaneously kill any hardware in your computer?

 

[soydios]

Erm...I've been running Vista 64-bit on 4GB of OC'ed memory, and none of those 4 sticks have had any issues at all. Running 4 sticks from the 975X northbridge does put a cap on my overclocking, but it's utterly stable.

 

[Cassius]

It seems like some of you didn't read the entire post. The fact that shutting down has caused a lockup and then no POST and a dead stick of memory twice must not be coincidence. I thought that maybe the way Vista was working with my mobo was doing something to the memory. Everything is running great on my PC, but this issue worries me a lot, because I don't know if I have a bad motherboard or if I have just been really unlucky getting 2 bad sticks of memory.

 

[Rebel44]

I agree its not coincidence - you have faulty memory......

 

[MadScientist]

How about a little more info, like what are you running the ram at, timings, some insane voltage or overclock? I think everyone read the entire post. How did you conclude it's bad ram? Did you test each stick individually with Memtest86?

 

[Cassius]

The memory is running at stock voltage 2.2V and speed(DDR2800), and at less than stock timings 5 5 5 15 instead of 4 4 4 12 just because I didn't really care about the timings that much. The reason I know its bad memory is because I get no POST after the stick dies, and so once I remove that bad stick then the system boots up. I did try the bad stick in different memory slots, as well as using the good stick in different memory slots, and confirmed that the memory was dead and it wasn't just a bad slot on my mobo.

I searched around and it seems like a lot of people are having this memory die on them, as some have stated here. So its become more likely that I've just gotten unlucky and received two bad sticks of memory. I guess if it happens a third time, then I'll have to think more about the mobo doing something stupid.

 

[kentsfield]

If you are only running those ddr2 800mhz memory at 5 5 5 15, you don`t need 2.2V, try 2.0V or less it should work with those timings, and it should produce less heat. Maybe they are dying because of too much heat. Do you have enough airflow? At 2.2v they probably get very hot.

Or maybe you are just unlucky. It also happened to me with my patriot memory i bought two 2x1gb 1.8V kits and both were faulty, had to rma both and now all works well, but it took me a week of frustration to find out, at first i blamed the mobo cause i thought that i can`t be that unlucky to have both kits faulty and at first did`t test the second kit enough, but after a week of troubles i decided to run memtest over night and not just for 2 hours.