4th install. Progressive increase of BSOD over time

Adds to my list of reasons that I hate mosquitoes. Not that it was a long list, mind you.:)

14 passes on card A, slot A1. No errors.

It was hard to tell that the pins were bent, other than they didn't reflect the light properly when viewed at a certain angle. They were also that distance away that falls between where I can see with my glasses on or off. Short of removing the board, I tried getting my head, a magnifying glass and a flashlight close enough without risking touching the socket. Looking N,S, E or W, it looks fine, but looking diagonally across the socket shows a couple soldiers not standing at attention.

Since they're made to act as springs, all that was required was to place the toothpick under the pin and push toward the bottom of it's mount. (Slowly and carefully, of course) I did this until they no longer stood out with their own reflection.

Borrowed some canned air from the guru, but still couldn't get all the fibers out. I have no idea what they were, because the were too fine to carpet or even cotton fibers. Had to utilize the toothpick yet again to get the two last remaining bundles.

Did a few laps around the socket with the flashlight making sure that the 2 miscoductive message minders were still in proper alignment, and also shined it flat across the pins to look for more fibers. Once I was satisfied with an all clear, then it was lock and load. BTW, shining horizontally across the pins revealed many of the fibers that weren't visible from looking straight down. I'm starting to think possibly spider web. They are, after all, in the king's palaces.

Jeff

Well, here we go... Having re-seated the chip;

Card A:
A1: Error
A2: Error
B1: Pass (x11)
B2: Error

Card B:
A1: Error
A2: Pass (x14)
B1: No splash screen on first boot. Reboot: Error
B2: Pass (x10)

I think the tests are now conclusive enough to say the motherboard needs swapped out. With Asus, you can do the credit card thing and they'll send you the new board and wait for you to return the old one. What they don't tell you (until you're ready to do it) is that they charge you $10 for the service.

I'm still apprehensive about using these RAM cards, though. I suppose I'll run them in the new board, which leads to the question, should I connect everything as-is and run the memtest before anything else? Obviously, any failure would point at cards or incompatibility between the two. (then I'll have to go through the whole RMA thing with Patriot!

You don't know how much of a grueling experience it is for me to deal with this machine. I'm taking no chances! I will definitely have the hard drive wiped and re-load Windows, but I'm just wanting to know if I'll be able to boot and run the memtest as usual.

I need to get back to making videos!

https://www.youtube.com/user/ElderlyIron

A new board is coming, though he says that it looks more like processor errors because of the random way it happens without consistency in either the board or the cards.

Looks like I may be in for more fun after all...

I'm back! Where have I been? Going 'round and 'round with Asus, of course! I did an advanced return, only to realize they would bill me at MSRP for the new board if the old one had ANY damage whatsoever. I told them I broke a tab off the ram release, and they said to send it in anyway and that it "Shouldn't be that big of a deal". I sent the new one back instead. That's a $350 chance I couldn't afford to take. Finally got a new RMA and sent the old board in. They sent an email stating the serial number was missing, voiding the warranty and I need to send $100 before they begin any work. I clicked "dispute" on the page and explained the situation. Again they persisted that I send in $100. I disputed again stating that I researched to find a 50% failure rate for that model board for the time period in which it was manufactured, it has been bad from day one, Fry's admits they could have returned it to the shelf without checking for a serial number and re-sold it, 3 Asus techs has deemed it defective and I finished with "Do you stand behind your products or not?" 2 days later I get a notice that there's a package en route to me FedEx. I get it back with 2 pins glaringly bent. I called immediately and they did an advanced RMA on the spot. As soon as I had a tracking number for the old board, they were to send a new one. By the start of the 3rd week, I called. They were waiting for parts for my old board. I asked where the new one was I was supposed to have gotten. Well, it got lost in the system somehow, but my old one should be fixed by the end of the week. No, no fellas. You said new board, and I don't want that old board back. After some deliberation, I again received a FedEx notice.

So far, it has performed as one would think it is supposed to. However. Wanting to update the bios, I find a page (As I didn't bookmark the bios update page when I started all this...) saying it is recommended that z-87 Deluxe boards have the updated bios for quad core processors BEFORE the processors are installed! Really? So I look. Sure enough. My board comes new, ready with a quad core socket, but the old, original, non-quad bios.

So, here I sit. No BSOD's, but performance is slowly degrading on the video editor software and will freeze if you edit long enough, making you re-open the program to continue, and IE10 shuts down for no apparent reason whatsoever. It also keeps telling me that my peripherals will run faster if I plug them into a USB3.0 port. Problem there is that everything on here is already in the 3.0 ports. The splash screen runs for 23-26 seconds as well, even though the maximum time is 15 seconds, and I had already set the time out to 3 seconds. Change it as often as you like, it's going to be a minimum of 23 seconds for the splash screen.

I have my doubts that updating the bios will help anything, but I'll give it a go again as soon as I figure out how all over again. So, improved I would say, but not solved.

Jeff