[Authentik8d]

So I bought a barebones pkg online. It went together easily enough. It has an ECS Elitegroup MOBO, AMD Phenom CPU, SATA WD HDD, and some corny off-brand DVD drive. Booted up fine, discovered both drives at POST and I can get into, and use, the BIOS setup. When I booted from the DVD with the brand new Win7 install disk (not an upgrade copy) it loads to a black screen saying "windows is installing files..." the progress bar goes across the screen two full times then it reboots to post. I tried using UBCD to partition and format my HDD (although i never was able to assign a drive letter....) on disk-0 it said Master Boot Record so I went to #1 and created the partition, i think. Anyway, rebooted and tried the W7 install again. Same thing. This is my first experience with W7 and with SATA. Somebody told me the Mobo might need drivers for controllers or something like that but the disk that came with the mobo is not bootable...gaaaaaaaaaaaa

[Judas]

a instant reboot on meerly just loading the setup files would indicate some peice of hardware isn't working right.

any chance you can burn yourself a copy of memtest86+ from Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool and let it run through and make sure your ram is not the culprit.

basically the hardrives are left completely untouched and everything until you start installing to them... so everything is unpacked to a ramdisk drive and if your ram is failing, or corrupting a portion of the unpacked files, yeah it'll reboot.

[Authentik8d]

Running Memtest now. So far so good at 10%, thanks for the help. I should mention that I know that I have the right memory and its new out of the box but perhaps I damaged it when I tried to boot without any CPU fan or sys fan a couple times because I had to buy them separate and I wasn't patient enough to see if I could get to post and bios after finishing assembly. Tell me I don't have to drop more money on new mem...

[Authentik8d]

OK...memtest ran through...all is ok...am i skrewed?`

[Authentik8d]

OK...all is not well
there is a red portion of my memtest telling me the sectors in which i have errors...looks like you were right...do i have any recourse besides trying to reclaim my mem or should I proceed directly to ordering new memory? Thank you in advance for your input.

[Neshi]

looks like your ram is DOA, it falls under warranty as far as I know.

[Authentik8d]

And here I thought I was one of the Lucky Bunch (Google it). Guess I need to post in the "Hardware Experience" and get in touch with tigerdirect. I'm going to try breaking down the whole PC and putting it back together again even though I know I'm going to get the same result...if anybody can think of an alternative please let me know...Also, I'm likely going to be looking for 2x2gb stix if anybody has a link

[Neshi]

try to run memtest with each one of the mem sticks separately.
This way, if one of them is working correctly, try installing windows again.

Maybe there is something else that doesnt allow windows to install.. this way, you can test it.

[Liqourice]

Neshi already said what I was about to...

Generally it's not very likely that both sticks are faulty, unless it's very low quality ram. So, one of them is probably ok and if everything works with that stick then you know what the problem is.

However, you can get errors if your BIOS settings are off as well so go into BIOS and select to load optimised default settings after a CMOS reset, then run memtest again to see if it's fixed. That would be the first thing to try. If this doesn't help then try one stick at a time to see which one or if both are faulty.

[Authentik8d]

booted with each mem stick separately...win7 install still reboots after upackinginstall files.?.I'm completely stumped...memtest said I had errors....must be super cheap ram I guess. I reset the cmos and chose load default in the bios, same difference
I need this thing to be running by the end of the weekend...that gives me five hours, P.S.T.

[Authentik8d]

Thanx

[Authentik8d]

U2 totally neshi...thanX! I have officially decided that people from New Zealand are hopelessly more helpful than Australians

[Neshi]

I'd still try running memtest with each stick seperate.
Trying to boot doesn't tell you if it is the memory at fault or something else.
There is an error with both sticks simultaneously. What if one of the sticks is correct, but windows still doesn't install.
You go off and buy new ram, and it doesn't help. You'll be back to square one. Best to determine what it is exactly that is at fault here, before you spend money on things that might not need replacing.

[Judas]

If memtest shows error at all.. aka.... red stuff..

the memory is faulty..

Stock settings.. frankly... i don't care who makes it or whatever... should never fail... that's what fail safe settings are for...

It is likely the entire machine is fine and the ram is bad... it's usually best for accuracies sake, to let memtest run through a few times at least.... because what initially passes can emediately fail sometimes with ram.

It is likely NOTHING you had done... it's not at all uncommon for ram to be received and packaged NEW and fail out of the box.

I would say probably on average with as few machines as i build each year, i receive probably 10 kits a year that are faulty....... either one or both sticks failing... be it OCZ or Crucial or Corsair... frankly i haven't had any luck with the last 2 memory companies.... OCZ was good .. and then it went sour.. and then it's good again for me.

[Authentik8d]

I've isolated each stick of memory and ran ramtest. First stick had errors...running a more complete test on the second stick now (passed last time but I only waited for it to run through twice) I'm going to see if I can return to Tiger for exchange I don't know whats left to try... BTW mem=Crucial 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz

[blibbax]

Originally Posted by Authentik8d

I've isolated each stick of memory and ran ramtest. First stick had errors...running a more complete test on the second stick now (passed last time but I only waited for it to run through twice) I'm going to see if I can return to Tiger for exchange I don't know whats left to try... BTW mem=Crucial 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz

If one stick has errors and the other doesn't, you don't need to try anything else - just return them and get new ones, as you say

[Liqourice]

Yep. I'd suggest you try to install with only the good stick in to check if it works. If it does then you know for sure it's only bad memory and nothing else as well.

[blibbax]

Originally Posted by Liqourice

Yep. I'd suggest you try to install with only the good stick in to check if it works. If it does then you know for sure it's only bad memory and nothing else as well.

It won't let me give you any more plus rep for the good advise you've given here or here!

[Tipstaff]

It could be any number of things though. The RAM could be bad, the board may not like the RAM, more specifically it may not want to run at the timings set by the RAM, or the board is trying to set timings the RAM doesn't like (I've seen this a lot with X58 boards, or early DDR3 based Intel boards).

BTW, I don't see anyone asking for a specs list, which to me is critical. That way we'd know what ECS board plus bios revision plus socket plus chipset it is (given that it runs DDR2 it's more than likely an AM2+ board, but there's still 28 possibilities), what optical drive (SATA or IDE), and which WD SATA drive (WD Green, Blue? If it's the Green drive is it the EARS model, and if so, what's the jumper set to?). Thankfully we know what RAM, so that helps (it's more than likely the Value Crucial DDR2).

Last thing, the fact that just using 1 stick of either RAM halted the install has me thinking more along the lines of it being the board itself, the hard drive, or the optical drive. It might even be as simple as it being a bad IDE or SATA cable. Along the same lines, if you are running the tests off a bootable CD I would stop, and try to run the memory tests off of a USB bootable drive instead. This way you bypass the optical drive, cuz if it's bad, or the cable is bad, then you can't rely on the application running of the disc.

[Neshi]

Originally Posted by Liqourice

Yep. I'd suggest you try to install with only the good stick in to check if it works. If it does then you know for sure it's only bad memory and nothing else as well.

that's what I meant as well
you put it so much clearer though, haha

[mcdragon2]

this is great information guys thanks it might be helpful when I do my build at the end of the month