system slow to respond? slow to start up?
check these minimum and recommended quantities of RAM :
windows XP : minimum 1GB, recommended 2GB
windows vista : minimum 2GB, recommended 3-4GB
when windows runs out of RAM, it uses virtual memory, which is space on the hard disk which can be used as spare RAM. the difference in speed between real RAM and virtual is a factor of billions. also, when virtual memory is being used it means constant hard disk activity which further slows any reading or writing of files.
windows will generally use virtual memory to some small extent no matter how much RAM you have, but will use it fairly constantly if less than about 200mb of RAM is available. RAM is a cheap upgrade to solve major slowdown problems!
Monday, October 20, 2008
random restarts due to failing PSU
got a system on the bench at the moment which randomly reboots. symptomatic of CPU overheating, but the sensor readings suggest it's fine
replaced the PSU and it's solid and stable
replaced the PSU and it's solid and stable
random BSOD, display reverts to 800x600
had a system in which was experiencing random BSODs, mainly during gaming, as well as sometimes the display reverting to very low resolution modes.
i checked the system logs and the wide variety of STOP codes suggested none of them were individually worth pursuing, and that there was likely a hardware (memory) problem.
i ran some memory tests for a few hours and they came up clean, but then some internet research found an interesting quote from the MSI website (it was an MSI motherboard) that said that the default memory timings might be too aggressive and could result in an unstable system. they actually expect you to manually underclock the RAM just to get a working system!
i found this a little odd, so went to investigate the DRAM settings in the BIOS, and that's when i noticed the default clock speed for the RAM was 200mhz, the correct setting for DDR400 RAM, but the machine was only fitted with DDR333. the correct clock speed for this is 167mhz. so i adjusted the setting, and the BSODs were gone.
there still remained a problem with the displays reverting to extremely low resolutions. this was caused by a lack of power - there was only a 450w PSU powering a dual-core 64-bit processor, 2gb of RAM, several optical and hard drives, and 2 nvidia graphics cards in SLI configuration.
the problem with the displays going bad was interesting, but then i noticed that there was only a 450w power supply, powering a 64-bit dual core system with 2gb ram, several drives, and 2 nvidia graphics cards in SLI configuration. upgrading this to a 750w corsair PSU solved that problem.
i checked the system logs and the wide variety of STOP codes suggested none of them were individually worth pursuing, and that there was likely a hardware (memory) problem.
i ran some memory tests for a few hours and they came up clean, but then some internet research found an interesting quote from the MSI website (it was an MSI motherboard) that said that the default memory timings might be too aggressive and could result in an unstable system. they actually expect you to manually underclock the RAM just to get a working system!
i found this a little odd, so went to investigate the DRAM settings in the BIOS, and that's when i noticed the default clock speed for the RAM was 200mhz, the correct setting for DDR400 RAM, but the machine was only fitted with DDR333. the correct clock speed for this is 167mhz. so i adjusted the setting, and the BSODs were gone.
there still remained a problem with the displays reverting to extremely low resolutions. this was caused by a lack of power - there was only a 450w PSU powering a dual-core 64-bit processor, 2gb of RAM, several optical and hard drives, and 2 nvidia graphics cards in SLI configuration.
the problem with the displays going bad was interesting, but then i noticed that there was only a 450w power supply, powering a 64-bit dual core system with 2gb ram, several drives, and 2 nvidia graphics cards in SLI configuration. upgrading this to a 750w corsair PSU solved that problem.
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