Linux fails to boot when upgrading memory to 4GB

[Sudsy]

I've seen clues on newsgroups in other languages but I can't read the
solutions...
I've got an Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard with an AMD64X2 5600+
installed.
It was initially provisioned with 2GB of memory and twin 250GB SATA-2
drives.
When I installed another two sticks of PC2-5300 (DDR2 667 MHz) RAM
today,
bringing the total up to 4GB, the system refused to boot!
I get the "ata1: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)" messages and then
the kernel
panics. I can't imagine I'm the first to encounter this problem but
I've not been
able to locate a definitive cause and/or solution. If I pull the extra
memory and
revert to 2GB then the problem disappears and the system boots.
Have I missed something obvious? Were my searches flawed? Any insights
on
this situation would be greatly appreciated!

ps. The new memory is the same speed as the original memory and I'm
using
the BIOS defaults.

 

[Peter de B. Harrington]

Maybe one of the ram sticks is bad. You can pull them out and test them 1
GB at a time. Then try the 2 new GBs of ram by themselves.

Best wishes,

Pete

 

[General Schvantzkopf]

I've seen clues on newsgroups in other languages but I can't read the
solutions...
I've got an Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard with an AMD64X2 5600+
installed.
It was initially provisioned with 2GB of memory and twin 250GB SATA-2
drives.
When I installed another two sticks of PC2-5300 (DDR2 667 MHz) RAM
today,
bringing the total up to 4GB, the system refused to boot! I get the
"ata1: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)" messages and then the kernel
panics. I can't imagine I'm the first to encounter this problem but I've
not been
able to locate a definitive cause and/or solution. If I pull the extra
memory and
revert to 2GB then the problem disappears and the system boots. Have I
missed something obvious? Were my searches flawed? Any insights on
this situation would be greatly appreciated!

ps. The new memory is the same speed as the original memory and I'm
using
the BIOS defaults.

Did the BIOS memory test pass? If it isn't enabled then go into the BIOS
and enable it.
If the BIOS memory test passes then your next step is to run Memtest86.
It runs off of DOS which uses almost no memory so it can boot on most
machines even when they have some bad RAM.
If that works then try setting the RAM clock speed down in the BIOS.
If noen of that identifies the problem then take Pete's suggestion and
start removing RAM until you find the bad DIMM.

 

[Sudsy]

In the period between when I originally posted and today a new BIOS
(1501) became available on the
Asus website. Guess what? I flashed my BIOS and, with the same memory
sticks, it now works!
RHEL 4 boots and can see the SATA drives and dmesg shows the
following:
Memory: 3912976k/4718592k available ...
I would have wasted money if I had taken the advice of Asus's
technical support and purchased new
memory. They could have just told me that they had a new BIOS version
in the works and to wait...

Thanks kindly to the responders!

This thread is complete with the following solution: install BIOS
version 1501 if you're running RHEL
4 on the Asus M2A-VM HDMI with 4GB of RAM.