Vista Memory Problem

[PC's Plus]

I have a problem. I have a system with a Abit Fatality AA8xe motherboard, a
3.2ghz Pemtium 4 CPU, with 1Gb memory . One IDE hard drive 120Gbs which has
the OS on it (vista business) and a raid volume of 1Tb (2 500Gb drives in a
hotswape case) and a 128Mb graphic card.I tryed to upgrade the system to 4Gb
memory and a new graphic card (Evga e-geForce 8800-GT). After installing the
memory and graphic card and restarting the system I got no display (Both
inputs missing). I put my old graphic card back in with the same results. I
called Evga about hte problem they said that Vista has a problem with more
that 3Gb of memory they susjested I remove the memory and try again I lowered
the memory to 2Gb with my old graphic card and it worked. The is that after
the boot up screen it failes with the error Boot Disk Failed insert system
disk and try again. I checked the Bios it see my IDE and Raid drives
everthing elese looke ok. I then tryed to reinstall Vista when it got to the
screen that asks where you want to install vista to it shows my raid as
primary and the IDE as unallocated space. When I click on drive select it
showes my C drive, the thing is it shows the Raid volume (which was the E
drive) as my C drive and doesn't show my IDE Drive which has the OS on it.
How can I get my IDE drive back to the C drive.
Sorry for how long this post is.
I hope this is the right group for this question. I think the that the Vista
problem with memor over 3Gb caused this. I can use any help I can get.
Thomas G.

 

[Drew]

Sounds either like a limitation of that particular motherboard or maybe in
need of a bios update...I run Vista business 32bit with 4gigs
ddr800...albeit with a different motherboard..System is rock solid and
smokin fast actual ram showing in Windows is 3.325 gigs..The reason I chose
4 gigs is first the motherboard supports up to 8gigs and I also have the
64bit version of Vista business (just not installed)....Hope you get it
cured !!

 

[flambe]

The last thing you need to do is reinstall Vista. Don't do it.
Before even considering this be sure you have everything you need backed up
to something other than your raid array, think DVD.
The memory problem is, surprise, NOT due to Vista (and I despise Vista). The
problem is your motherboard, which does not support 4gbs of ram, despite the
specs, or the particular type of ram you have--there are differences in the
structure of RAM sticks that go beyond the basic labelling of type and
speed. There is nothing you can do about this, particularly considering the
age of your hardware (ancient by current standards, sorry to say). Your
hardware lives in a 2gb world and there is nothing you can do about it.
In truth, despite Microsoft's spin about Vista supporting 3gb of RAM there
is no measurable difference in performance beyond 2 gbs in 32 bit OSes and
since Vista 64 is even less stable/usable than Vista 32 . . .
If you can boot your system and it will run stably with 2 gbs of RAM and the
8800 card then that is the best you can do. For a single core Pentium 4 that
is pretty much maximum performance. That CPU will actually hold back
performance of the 8800 video card.
I would strongly consider updating your motherboard and CPU to a dual/quad
core system with the appropriate type of RAM.

 

[Robert Bowden]

I normally overcome these drives issues by installing Windows just just the
IDE drive attached, then plug in the rest once Windows is up and running,
you should also check your BIOS to make sure that the IDE drive are detected
ok, and is set as the first hard drive from a list of avaiable HDD the BIOS
can see.

HTH

 

[PC's Plus]

Thanks for the help with the memory. What I need now is help getting the IDE
drive back to the C drive, not the raid drive as the C drive.
can anyone help.