Windows 7 64bit, Asus A8n32sli-deluxe

[Prefontaine]

I decided to go to Windows 7(64) and I also wanted to upgrade from 2g dual channel to 4g dual channel memory. I did a clean install with only 2g memory installed, because I had already read about the issue I was going to face. So I get Windows 7 running with 2g memory, no problems. Install the other 2g(now the total is4g), and everything is running fine.

Windows recognizes 4g, but only 2.97 is usuable. Also I've noticed there are two unknown devices on my motherboard. So I'm guessing there weren't drivers for them on the W7 installation disk. My system seems fine, but I would like to use all of the ram I've installed and also I would like to be sure that the correct drivers for this motherboard are installed.
(Asus A8n32Sli-deluxe)

Visiting the Asus website for answers is not helping, pretty much there are users with the same issue I have, and there is no definate answer to solve this problem. Just other users saying "try this or try that" Seems to me that Asus would release a W7(64bitdriver) for this motherboard? Is that going to happen? I'm being impatient? Or should I just be happy that my system works at all. The answer is make me a W764bitdriver for the asusAn32sli deluxe or hear me complain about Asus till I die.

Or can anyone help? Thanks

 

[seekermeister]

I wish that I could help, because I have the same MB, but am having the same memory issue. When I went to the memory tab of the Resource Monitor, it shows that 1GB is hardware reserved, but I have yet to discover what is reserving it. I seriously doubt that the unknown devices in your Device Manager has anything to do with this. because I have no unknown devices.

 

[niteowl2k]

Win7, 4GB RAM, and ASUS mobo

Hi Prefontaine, I'm in much the same position. My system is based on an ASUS M2N4-SLI motherboard, has 4GB of dual-channel RAM, and I recently upgraded to Win7 Pro 64-bit. Having had some bad install experiences in the past, I visited every hardware vendor's site before I started and burned every available driver to DVD before formatting. It turned out to be unnecessary though - Win7 booted up with its own drivers for my hardware, and Windows Update brought me another ASUS driver set on its first run. So I never used anything from my Drivers disc. My Win7 'Computer' properties page states 4.00GB of RAM installed.

One thing I've noticed is that some ASUS setups set aside a certain amount of RAM for on-board video. On my wife's ASUS board the BIOS setting can be 'Auto' up to '256MB'. Even if yours was set to '256MB', that doesn't cover the whole 1.03GB you're not seeing, but it is a place to start.

 

[PaulGo]

I have the Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe and with both Windows Vista 64 and Winows 7 64 I had to play around with the Windows System Configuration - Boot - Advanced Options to get Windows to recognize all of my four GB of memory. With Vista it was a bit more straight forward by checking the HAL box. But for Win 7 I had to check, reboot and then uncheck reboot and then choose Normal Startup to get it to recognize all the memory. After I did that I was able to go back to selective startup. A bit weird but now I have no more problems.

 

[zone23]

I have your board and this used to work all though the last time I tried it my machine wouldn't boot for some reason.

In your BOIS:

Advanced-> CPU Configuration -> Memory Setting-> Memory Configuration-> Hardware Memory Hole -> Enable

This will let you use all 4gb, the problem I used to have was the machine would not resume from standby correctly.

The two devices 1 is midi port which has not worked since vista so just disable in BIOS, Second is ACPI device you can get the driver from the asus site under ATK1 "ACPI driver for ATK 0110 virtual device for Windows (32bit and 64bit)/2003(32bit & 64bit)/VISTA(32bit & 64bit)". You don't have to install the program just show device manager were the driver is, its in the ASUS_CoolnQuiet_V21706\2.17.06\Acpi64\WINVISTA folder.

I opted to just run 3gb so resume would work since I use it all the time and the extra gb of RAM doesn't seem to make a huge difference. I'm also running RAID and SLI so you may not have the problems I did depending on your config. When you enable memory hole you will see the system use all the RAM when it first posts.

 

[Prefontaine]

the most help ive gotten so far

thanks everybody. All of your replys seem very helpful. I was getting the run aroud on the asus site, not finding any real solutions. It may be awhile but once I get to it I will try to get my 4g's of Ram usable. I'll let ya'll know what worked.

thanks again, and if anyone else has any more suggestions let us know.

 

[Prefontaine]

Oh, and one more question. Is it necessary to install any of the drivers that originally came on the asus motherboard CD. Or does the install of Win7 take care of that for me?

 

[seekermeister]

Zone23,

Hmm, I just tried the memory hole setting, and it did work as far as showing all of the memory, but each time Windows got to the login screen, it BSODed with an 0XD1 on vsmraid.sys.

This is curious, because that is a VIA driver, and the only thing that I have that is VIA is a PCI controller, which is raid, but I don't use the raid. The reason that I have it installed is for an SATA optical drive that there isn't room for otherwise.

From what I saw at a glance Googling, it appears that vsmraid.sys is a 32 bit file, rather than 64. I know that I never installed it, so I assume that Windows Update did.

Beside uninstalling the controller, which would also cost me the optical drive, is there some other solution?

 

[Prefontaine]

Yes, the memory hole setting to enable works! No problems so far.

 

[seekermeister]

Oh, and one more question. Is it necessary to install any of the drivers that originally came on the asus motherboard CD. Or does the install of Win7 take care of that for me?

I doubt that you will need anything from the CD, I didn't.

 

[Prefontaine]

Very Good.

Tried all of your suggestions and it all worked. Ahh.

Thanks again

 

[seekermeister]

I ended up deleting vsmraid.sys from System32\Drivers, and it now boots without the crash and with the memory hole enabled, so I guess my problem is solved.

 

[seekermeister]

Then again, maybe not. That DVD drive no longer appears in Disk Management or file managers, even though the BIOS screen sees it.

 

[zone23]

Yes, the memory hole setting to enable works! No problems so far.

What about waking from sleep is that working ok?

 

[zone23]

Then again, maybe not. That DVD drive no longer appears in Disk Management or file managers, even though the BIOS screen sees it.

You know I have never used that controller as a matter of fact I didn't even remember it being on the board. So I'm not going to be much help to you as far as that goes. Sorry.

 

[zone23]

Oh, and one more question. Is it necessary to install any of the drivers that originally came on the asus motherboard CD. Or does the install of Win7 take care of that for me?

I haven't used the CD that came with the board in years. I used to go to the Nvidia site and download the drivers directly from them. Unfortunately Nvidia stopped supporting nforce4 about a year or two ago (there so smart).

With all that said I have used the last x64 driver Nvidia developed for vista x64, but saw no performance gain in 7.

(15.23_nforce_winvista64_international_whql)

In short except for the ACPI driver 7 takes care of the rest. I have had 7 get the ACPI driver through windows update although on my last install it didn't work correctly.

 

[seekermeister]

You know I have never used that controller as a matter of fact I didn't even remember it being on the board. So I'm not going to be much help to you as far as that goes. Sorry.

You didn't remember it being on the board, because it isn't. It is a controller plugged into a PCI slot. Since I posted about this, I woke up a bit and realized that since rearranging some components between my rigs, I do have a spare SATA connector available on the MB, so I will plug the DVD in there and remove the controller card.

 

[Prefontaine]

Waking from sleep

No thats the one problem left. So for now I've just set sleep to never. It tries to resume windows but nothing happens.

Also I couldn't find the driver you spoke of in the " ATK1 "ACPI driver for ATK 0110 virtual device for Windows (32bit and 64bit)/2003(32bit & 64bit)/VISTA(32bit & 64bit)". You don't have to install the program just show device manager were the driver is, its in the ASUS_CoolnQuiet_V21706\2.17.06\Acpi64\WINVISTA folder."

I tried that but I didn't see the Asus coolnquiet_v21706\2.17.06 folder, everything was there in the download from Asus but that part.

In other words, I downloaded Atk1 from asus, but couldn't find the right file.

 

[Frostmourne]

The best idea here would be to update chipset drivers, but as Nvidia doesn't make them, get new drivers for all your hardware, then use driver sweeper when you update them. Also, nvidia chipsets are unstable.

 

[seekermeister]

I recently ordered a new BIOS chip for my MB from biosdepot, and it seem quite stable to me.