Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB to 6. When I installed the memory every thing was fine until I went to run level 5. At that point the screen turned to garbage and the system froze. Is there a way to fix this so I can use the memory I bought? Do I need a new display card? Current hardware: Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV505 [Radeon X1550 64-bit] -- http://www.spinics.net/lists/
On Sun, Mar 08, 2009 at 03:00:59AM +0000, Rick wrote:> Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB > to 6. When I installed the memory every thing was fine until I went to > run level 5. At that point the screen turned to garbage and the system > froze. Is there a way to fix this so I can use the memory I bought? Do > I need a new display card? > > Current hardware: > > Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard > VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV505 [Radeon X1550 64-bit]That sounds pretty strange. Have you confirmed that removing the "new" memory allows you to run in runlevel 5 again? If so, maybe you need to adjust some memory timing settings in BIOS. Ray
Rick <ellis at spinics.net> writes:> Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB > to 6. When I installed the memory every thing was fine until I went to > run level 5. At that point the screen turned to garbage and the system > froze. Is there a way to fix this so I can use the memory I bought? Do > I need a new display card?Have you tried memtest86? without a serial console, it'd be hard to see if that's the problem, but it is a good place to start. Often if you have bad memory the problem doesn't show until you use something that actually uses more of your memory (like starting the GUI)
On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 10:00 PM, Rick <ellis at spinics.net> wrote:> Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB > to 6. When I installed the memory every thing was fine until I went to > run level 5. At that point the screen turned to garbage and the system > froze. Is there a way to fix this so I can use the memory I bought? Do > I need a new display card? > > Current hardware: > > ?Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard > ?VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV505 [Radeon X1550 64-bit] >First of all, lots and lots of data "missing" here ..... Secondly, I agree with other posters --> make sure that memtest86+ runs successfully and finds all your memory. Let it run *at least* overnight before accepting the new memory. [Note: Three explicit things that you need to check and report the results of here -- if you'd like more help.] Third, check your BIOS settings -- particularly w.r.t. VGA memory, memory-hole re-mapping, etc. I'd do this before I'd run the memtests, btw. Does the BIOS see the memory? Is the BIOS configured to map the VGA + PCI + ... (typically up to 1 GB) memory to higher space? Is your MTTR set to Discrete or Continuous? I'd run the Intel Linux Firmware BIOS test to see if the BIOS / Memory are configured and compatible at this point. Forth, what (precisely) CentOS kernel are you booting?? Does it support greater than 4 GB of RAM?? Does it see all the memory -- both the 6 GB of physical RAM plus the VGA + PCI re-mapped -- e.g., does it see almost 7 GB of memory?? How does the kernel see the memory (e.g., the MTTR block -- which is one of the first things the system reports when it boots up)?? Fifth, after the GUI scrambles the screen, did you kill the session and/or switch to an alternate Virtual Console and review both /var/log/messages and X.org logfiles?? Once, you've got that, you might have a better idea of what's going on ... (and maybe where your problem is ...) HTH -rak-
In article <12768.4492654682$1236586039 at news.gmane.org>, Sorin Srbu <centos at centos.org> wrote:>If the motherboard supports dual-channel configs, one might want to take care >how one distributes the different mem-sticks in the banks. Eg the 2GB-sticks >in bank 1 and 3 and the 4GB-sticks in banks 2 and 4.Well, yeah, of course. But even if I got that wrong, the 4GB alone did not work in the same slots the 2GB sticks were in.