Please help - Corsiar memory failures with memtest

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Kongar

Gawd
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Oct 25, 2004
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My apologies for the noobness here, but I really could use some help. I'm running an AMD 4400+ dual core on an Asus A8N-SLI deluxe motherboard. When I purchased the motherboard, I bought the Corsair XMS 3500LLPRO memory. Corsair has always been good to me in the past (no memory issues ever), and it was recommended for use with my motherboard. Anyways, I originally bought 2 gig sticks.

The PC has always been a bit unstable. It only very occasionally crashes during use (and games), but booting has been a nightmare. It tries to boot and just hangs right when the OS starts to load. Oddly, cycling input power to the power supply always fixes whatever is wrong, and the PC boots. I know this has to be a hardware issue since I'm dual booting Linux and XP, and it does it regardless of OS being booted. I've also reloaded both operating systems (including low level formatting the HD) to no avail.

Which eventually led me to testing the memory. Memtest86 failed miserably on test 6 with over 700 errors. Sometime after that test, the whole thing crashes and the system stops responding.

SO, I pulled out all but one stick. Fails on test 6. So do the other modules (I have 4 Gigs) when I put them in one at a time. I tried moving the modules to different slots - same result - lots of errors on test 6 and eventually a crash.

Double checked my bios - all the settings are on default. Default = auto detection of the memory. Never got around to overclocking as the system hasn't been stable yet.

I'm at a loss - what to do? There's no way I'm believing I have 4 bad memory sticks (I bought two more - I'm a sucker). The 4 sticks are all identical, and the 2nd pair was purchased about 6 months after the first pair (so I can't even blame a bad manufacturing lot). I'm thinking a timing setting is wrong or something, but it's set to auto detect in the bios - not sure how that can be wrong...

Could it be the motherboard or the CPU? If so how do I go about figuring that out?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

A very frustrated Kongar
 
Memtest is known to get lots of errors on Test6 if "usb legacy support" enabled in the bios. After reading through you post ,. I am almost certain that it is this that is causing your problem. Disabling 'usb legacy support' will definately stop the errors in test6, but not sure if it will solve your system hanging on boot.

Try disabling "usb legacy support" in the bios and re-running the test. It solves the errors for most people.

It is most common on asus motherboards, but also with some other manufacturers aswell. Here is some info:

"This is not a bug in memtest86+, but a bug in the BIOS. The BIOS does not mark the memory used by the USB Legacy Support as reserved in the e820 memory map. Memtest uses this memory map to determine what memory can be tested and what memory not. Of course this causes a clash between metest testing some part of the memory while it is used by the BIOS, resulting in memory errors, crashes or even reboots."
 
Kongar said:
I'm at a loss - what to do? There's no way I'm believing I have 4 bad memory sticks (I bought two more - I'm a sucker). The 4 sticks are all identical, and the 2nd pair was purchased about 6 months after the first pair (so I can't even blame a bad manufacturing lot). I'm thinking a timing setting is wrong or something, but it's set to auto detect in the bios - not sure how that can be wrong...

Could it be the motherboard or the CPU? If so how do I go about figuring that out?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

A very frustrated Kongar
Click to expand...

First, increase your VDIMM (Memory voltage) to 2.85 or so, if it's not there already, and try it again.

If that doesn't work, do what sitalchauhan says, and disable USB Legacy Support.
 
USB legacy support was the culprit. Thanks for the help! Once I disabled that, my memory has been error free for over 24 hours. Still not solving the boot up problem, but I'm glad my memory is apparently ok.
 
As much as I hate to say this, you may want to do a clean install of Windows. With all the memory errors that you had, there is a pretty good chance that your install was corrupted.

It's a pain in the ass, but that may turn into your only viable option to resolve this..

Let us know, good luck
 
Kongar said:
USB legacy support was the culprit. Thanks for the help! Once I disabled that, my memory has been error free for over 24 hours. Still not solving the boot up problem, but I'm glad my memory is apparently ok.
Click to expand...

I'm amazed. How can they possibly be related?
 
mikeblas said:
I'm amazed. How can they possibly be related?
Click to expand...

I have heard of this error for a very long while, yet it is still not commonly known.

As I posted above, it happens because:
"This is not a bug in memtest86+, but a bug in the BIOS. The BIOS does not mark the memory used by the USB Legacy Support as reserved in the e820 memory map. Memtest uses this memory map to determine what memory can be tested and what memory not. Of course this causes a clash between metest testing some part of the memory while it is used by the BIOS, resulting in memory errors, crashes or even reboots."

People have emailed Asus about it and then they usually fix it in their next bios update. However, when they then release a new motherboard, they have the bug again. The bug has been fixed and then reappeared in new motherboards so many times that people have given up emailing Asus about it.
 
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