Increased RAM causes Win 7 to hang on boot

cptdzastr said:

The first set was 2*2GB PC 6400 ram by PNY. The new set is 2*2GB PC6400 ram by Patriot. The settings for the RAM have been set automatically by my BIOS, and its worth noting that the new RAM worked flawlessly in 32 bit Win7 (aside from the fact that Windows saw it but couldn't really use it) with those settings.

Did you mean 2*1GB PC 6400 PNY? Other wise you're replacing 4 GB not 2...

chev65 said:

Mixing Ram brands and types hardly ever works right. I strongly advise against it. You also should not need more than 4GB for gaming. You will be much better off running only the matched 4GB kit then setting the memory up,..timings, divider and voltages to manufacture specs in bios manually. If you keep getting the installation errors then clear the cmos and try again.

The best way to handle higher resolutions with bigger screens is to go SLI assuming that your board supports it.

Win7 32 bit probably worked because it can't even access more than 3GB of the 6GB that you installed.

If you want to run more than 4GB there are a few 8GB kits that will work. I've been through this a million times at EVGA forums where I have 34 BR's for giving advice just like this. It may not be what you want to hear but it's the truth.

Indeed. The chipset for this particular product seems to have the same issue as my eVGA 780i mobo did for many, many users.

chev65 said:

You will want to go into bios and set up the memory timings and memory voltage manually. The Auto settings hardly ever get it right. You will need to look up the specs for your Ram for this because I'm not sure what your exact type of Ram is.

You will want to use the memory slot futhest from the CPU, then skip a space then install the other one.

wrong

cptdzastr said:

Mine appear to pair directly instead of staggering, but I'll give manually tweaking the voltage a shot and post back anything useful I find out.

Correct

chev65 said:

You should always be skipping a slot when only installing 2. The last slot and the second one get the instructions from the CPU first so if only using two slots those should be the ones to use. I'm not sure what you mean by pair directly?

You should be able to look up the specs for your 4GB Ram kit from the manufacture web site.

wrong - slot skipping is *not* universal

chev65 said:

Yes for dual channel you want a space between the two. Starting with the slot furthest from the CPU.

Nope.

cptdzastr said:

The manual seems to disagree, unless I'm misinterpreting it.

You're correct. Also, see techPowerUp :: ASUS M2A-VM Review :: Page 3 / 19 - the very last picture under the Board layout section -

To run your memory in dual-channel mode, you have to put the modules into slots of the same color

cptdzastr said:

Perhaps some clarification is in order. Before the display upgrade and this whole mess starting, I had 2 GB of RAM made by Ballistix. The first attempt at upgrade RAM was made by PNY, 2 *2 GB (for an additive 4 GB, totaling 6 GB). I ran into the specified problems, even with the new RAM by itself (though booting with just the Ballistix RAM works, as does any combination of the two in win 7 32 bit). Thinking that perhaps the chips were bad (unlikely, but possible) or that they were in some fashion incompatible with Win 7 64 bit, I exchanged them for Patriot 2 * 2 GB chips. The issue remains the same, so I don't think there's anything inherent to the hardware that could cause it unless it's something I've got set wrong. Modifying the voltage for the Patriot RAM (by itself, without the Ballistix RAM installed) did not appear to make any difference. Windows still hangs during boot, just after the flag completes and starts to wave.

With 4GB you may need to increase the northbridge voltage to get it stable. It's a standard adjustment on many enthusiast boards but it goes by different names depending on the chipset and bios.

Also with your strange Dimm slot arrangement you would need to use the same colored slots as somebody pointed out. Not many are set up that way. I thought it used an Nvidia chip set with a standard Dimm slot arrangement. Thanks to John and Antman for pointing that out.

Glad you got this worked out, b/c I have been in here very little - only for brief periods of time, at that.

In all honesty, though, I am surprised that I never thought to mention checking for a BIOS upgrade - it took a few iterations of BIOS upgrades before this issue was solved for many folks, after which all reported smooth transitions to larger amounts of memory, but I had forgotten the end result (and also assumed that you already had the latest BIOS, which was my fault entirely).