BSOD on Dell Inpiron 560s after installing new RAM and new GFX card

Hi there,

Long time lurker, first time poster here. Your forums have provided a lot of support to me in the past and I am usually able to sort out most things, but this BSOD issue has really got me stumped. So thanks for all the help in the past and thanks in advance for any help you can give me with this issue.....

I have had my computer for a few years and it has always ran fine - with stock parts. A few weeks ago i upgraded a few things and this has resulted in a really unstable system and multiple, random BSODs (or should that be BSsOD?!)

In the same sitting I changed a few components as follows....

I swapped out the old GeForce 310 GFX card for Nvidia Quadro 600 (now updated to driver 311.50)
I swapped out all my RAM (4 x Kingston 1GB Sticks supplied with the machine) and replaced them with 4 x 2GB Sticks Kingston Value RAM - Making sure it was compatible with the computer as per the System guide from DELL - all have been tested with Memtest and no errors found
I started using a cheap 4 way USB splitter to connect a Wacom tablet and a USB Lacie drive
Since I had the tower open, I swapped out my 3 year old CMOS battery and replaced it

That's about it.... After that, upon startup I would have multiple BSODs and it has never gone away...

It happens pretty consistently when the machine is started after a few hours off... like overnight - but having a fresh CMOS battery in it, this makes no sense to me...

If you persevere and keep rebooting up after the crashes, the machine seems to be able to recover itself and then behave relatively well, but this is not always the case.... The crashes seem to be without a pattern. (Like today, after 3 restarts, it settled down all seemed well.... I left some music playing in winanmp, no other windows open - went for a shower, came back and was greeted by silence and 'windows has recovered from an... You know the rest)

The BSODs can be brought on by anything from opening the start menu, opening my browser (Firefox), opening windows explorer

Also, little things fail with no explanation... I have an old Lacie drive which I connect via a PCI Firewire card. Was working yesterday... then stopped... then after an 'F8 - Last know good configuration' reboot, worked again.. Then today... not working....

I have reinstalled the system from scratch... TWICE and very little has improved

I have tried to interpret the minidump files, but it's beyond me I'm afraid. I think I have been through and updated any drivers which may be troublesome, but can't seem to logically work through and find the solution...

Any help you can give me with this would be much appreciated as I'm all out of ideas. All my system diagnostics are attached.

Mambique

Also, If you made it this far, you have my thanks for even reading this much!

Thanks for the reply fireberd.

Looks like (I hope anyway) this is a simple case of me not seeing the wood for the trees!

I was unaware of KVRs history of issues. I thought it was enough to be aware of factors like Non-eec etc when buying RAM

I did change both those things at the same time - I realise it was probably foolish, but they both arrived on the same day and I couldn't resist getting it all set up...

I still have my old RAM so I will put that in tonight, leave it overnight and see how it is in the morning.

Thanks again for your help

I have read about voltage issues, and did look into that as possible cause, but I scoured my BIOS and could not find any parameters to adjust the voltage - I thought I was maybe missing a trick as the options were very limited, but couldn't find a tab that opened up 'advanced' properties

the stock RAM came with no discernible voltage indicators (the labels were next to useless) so I didn't know if there was a discrepancy or not.

During my research into all this, I'm sure I read somewhere that this is handled automatically by the BIOS. I checked my BIOS version and it was the most up to date so I assumed this wasn't the issue and moved onto something else.

I will check the stability with my old RAM and then look at getting my hands on the Crucial RAM. Do you know if the BIOS (Dell Inc A06 - 01/12/2010) will automatically adapt to a different voltage?

I see...

The RAM Ive just pulled out was KVR1066D3N7/2G 1.5V and from what I can see on the Crucial UK site, the recommended RAM is also 1.5V So I don't know if the voltage was an issue.

What I did find interesting was that Kingston don't even mention my part number on the site... the closest they have is KVR1066D3S8N7/2g

Despite only a two digit difference, comparing the tech sheets, they seem to work in different ways (in my opinion, based on the little I know about all this) and although all the other attributes are the same (voltage, latency etc), this difference must lead to the incompatibility

Mine is 'based on sixteen 128M x 8-bit DDR3-1066 FBGA components'

Whereas the S8 model is 'based on eight 256M x 8-bit DDR3-1066 FBGA components'

Anyway, I digress... but it suggests to me that I have bought some really old RAM off eBay and that is maybe why it doesn't work. I have searched for both of the part numbers with 'dell inspiron 560s' also in the search and nothing relevant came up, so its clearly not a recommended upgrade and I'll be going with the Crucial RAM as you are not alone in recommending it.

So this morning was the first time in a long time that I turned on my pc and didnt see a BSOD! All regular programs working fine!

I will obviously monitor it further and especially when I again upgrade from the stock RAM (to crucial this time), but all initial signs point towards the issue being the KVR.

Thanks for your input Fireberd

Just out of interest, do you know if KVR has a reputation for poor compatibility across multiple brands of PC of just DELL. I'm just wondering about selling it on and having to put some kind of 'caveat emptor' when I list it.