Problems mixing dual and single sided DIMMS ??

[zack]

I've been getting some weird stability issues.. When I start up, I get
a different error almost every time.. Blue screens saying
irql_not_less_or_equal, page_fault_in_non_paged_area,
no_more_irp_stacks, etc.. I even got an error saying ntfs.sys was missing!!

I have two 128MB PC100 modules.. one is single sided, and one is double
sided. I think the double sided one has 2 banks of 64mb.

The weird part is, I can install windows XP just fine. and it runs
without errors startng up and rebooting for about 24 hours.. Then is
when the errors start appearing.. I might get one or two intermittent
errors, then after a while I start getting errors every time I start
up.. Until I pull one of the memory modules.. The errors then go away..

It's the same story with 2 different motherboards.. An Asus CUV4X, and
Soyo SY-6BA+IV with same hardware. I'm trying to figure out whether
it's the memory, or another hardware problem, because I've had the same
type of issues with a Matrox video card in a totally different
computer.. I got same type of errors until I pulled the video card and
used the onboard video.. This card doesn't seem to be causing any
problems with these motherboards though.. Not yet at least.

 

[zack]

Another thing.. I can run Memtest86 on this thing for days with 0 errors..

 

[R_Supp]

Another thing.. I can run Memtest86 on this thing for days with 0 errors..

Memory problems do not necessarily mean dodgy ram. It could just be that
your mobo doesn`t like it.
I have run some strange combos of ram on Win 98SE with no problems but Win
XPee will not tolerate less than perfect ram.
Usually XPee will not copy to hard drive perfectly if the ram isn`t 100%
good.

 

[Ed]

Memory problems do not necessarily mean dodgy ram. It could just be that
your mobo doesn`t like it.
I have run some strange combos of ram on Win 98SE with no problems but Win
XPee will not tolerate less than perfect ram.
Usually XPee will not copy to hard drive perfectly if the ram isn`t 100%
good.

I had one of my hard drive partitions disappear in WinXP with RAM that I
later found out wasn't 100% stable at their rated timings. I was able to
read and write to the partition in DOS though. ;p

Ed

 

[6bal]

Usually XPee will not copy to hard drive perfectly if the ram isn`t 100%
good.

I hope this isn't how you test RAM.

 

[Arnie Berger]

If memtest passes then I would be skeptical that you have a memory
problem. I'm not saying that it is impossible, just less likely. You
might want to explore memtest86 some more and see if it has tests that
actually test the memory in burst mode as well as random access mode.
I vaguely remember that it was an option.

Of course, all of these failures can be explained by bad hardware,
such as a bad video card, or a faulty driver, or other things besides
memory. That's why I'm skeptical of a memory fault.

Can you run your system reliably if you run windows in safe mode? If
you can then you probably have a driver problem.

ab

 

[zack]

I was skeptical of mem fault at first too, but I haven't had a single
crash in a few days when not using these 2 memory modules together..
They are both very stable alone, but when put together is when the
crashes occur. I also tried a 64mb module. It ran fine paired with
the other single sided module, but when mixed with the double sided
module, I started getting more crashes.