No POST when more than 3.5GB memory installed?

[amn0270]

I have a client with an Asrock P4V88+ motherboard on a WinXP Home
machine. He had been running with 2GB of memory. He wanted to double
that so I confirmed how much his board supported, 4GB with a max of
1GB per slot and ordered 4 pieces of Crucial 1GB. When all 4 chips are
installed the system would not POST, however with only 3 installed it
works fine. I know that there is an issue with Intel processors and 32
bit OS's only registering up to 3.5 regardless of board specs but why
won't it simply POST normal and simply only register 3.5. It does not
POST at all. Changing slots has no effect. I dropped one of the old
512 chips in the empty slot along with three of the 1 Gigers and it
booted fine though strangely his AGP card suddenly becomes lost by
Windows when the 512 chip is in. That may be simply be some sort of
Windows instability due to using a mismatched chip but it does POST.
Take out the 512 chip and run on 3 of the Crucial 1 Gigers only and
everything returns to normal. So it seems running 4GB and the system
fails to POST at all. And 3.5 works but is unstable. But any ideas why
it won't even POST with 4GB?

Thanks in advance,
Adam

 

[krw]

I have a client with an Asrock P4V88+ motherboard on a WinXP Home
machine. He had been running with 2GB of memory. He wanted to double
that so I confirmed how much his board supported, 4GB with a max of
1GB per slot and ordered 4 pieces of Crucial 1GB. When all 4 chips are
installed the system would not POST, however with only 3 installed it
works fine. I know that there is an issue with Intel processors and 32
bit OS's only registering up to 3.5 regardless of board specs but why
won't it simply POST normal and simply only register 3.5. It does not
POST at all. Changing slots has no effect. I dropped one of the old
512 chips in the empty slot along with three of the 1 Gigers and it
booted fine though strangely his AGP card suddenly becomes lost by
Windows when the 512 chip is in. That may be simply be some sort of
Windows instability due to using a mismatched chip but it does POST.
Take out the 512 chip and run on 3 of the Crucial 1 Gigers only and
everything returns to normal. So it seems running 4GB and the system
fails to POST at all. And 3.5 works but is unstable. But any ideas why
it won't even POST with 4GB?

It certainly sounds dumb, but I/O has to go somewhere in memory.
Perhaps they allocate memory before I/O (and there is no address
space left)? The 512MB issue sounds like the same sort of thing with
the AGP card.

 

[Bruce]

I have a client with an Asrock P4V88+ motherboard on a WinXP Home
machine. He had been running with 2GB of memory. He wanted to double
that so I confirmed how much his board supported, 4GB with a max of
1GB per slot and ordered 4 pieces of Crucial 1GB. When all 4 chips are
installed the system would not POST, however with only 3 installed it
works fine. I know that there is an issue with Intel processors and 32
bit OS's only registering up to 3.5 regardless of board specs but why
won't it simply POST normal and simply only register 3.5. It does not
POST at all. Changing slots has no effect. I dropped one of the old
512 chips in the empty slot along with three of the 1 Gigers and it
booted fine though strangely his AGP card suddenly becomes lost by
Windows when the 512 chip is in. That may be simply be some sort of
Windows instability due to using a mismatched chip but it does POST.
Take out the 512 chip and run on 3 of the Crucial 1 Gigers only and
everything returns to normal. So it seems running 4GB and the system
fails to POST at all. And 3.5 works but is unstable. But any ideas why
it won't even POST with 4GB?

Thanks in advance,
Adam

My guess is that with more memory load you need to tweak down the memory
timings to get it stable.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

I have a client with an Asrock P4V88+ motherboard on a WinXP Home
machine. He had been running with 2GB of memory. He wanted to double
that so I confirmed how much his board supported, 4GB with a max of
1GB per slot and ordered 4 pieces of Crucial 1GB. When all 4 chips are
installed the system would not POST, however with only 3 installed it
works fine. I know that there is an issue with Intel processors and 32
bit OS's only registering up to 3.5 regardless of board specs but why
won't it simply POST normal and simply only register 3.5. It does not
POST at all. Changing slots has no effect. I dropped one of the old
512 chips in the empty slot along with three of the 1 Gigers and it
booted fine though strangely his AGP card suddenly becomes lost by
Windows when the 512 chip is in. That may be simply be some sort of
Windows instability due to using a mismatched chip but it does POST.
Take out the 512 chip and run on 3 of the Crucial 1 Gigers only and
everything returns to normal. So it seems running 4GB and the system
fails to POST at all. And 3.5 works but is unstable. But any ideas why
it won't even POST with 4GB?

Thanks in advance,
Adam

Go to Device Manager and view the memory resources. You may find that
the AGP card is competing for address space at C0000000 and above. See
if you can manually assign a different address range for the card, eg
somewhere above E0000000 (= 3.5GB).

- Franc Zabkar

 

[The little lost angel]

I have a client with an Asrock P4V88+ motherboard on a WinXP Home
machine.

Umm, I know this probably sounds stupid but have you asked Asrock
support?