Re: [SLE] Cannot install 9.3 or 10.0 with 4GB ram, 2GB fine

Mike Coan wrote:
I have the following setup

Motherboard Epox 9NPA Ultra (nforce4 chiopset)
CPU Athlon 64 3200 Venice Core (Socket 939)
Memory 4 1GB sticks of Rosewill DDR 400
Lite-On DVD-RW
4 Hitachi 80GB SATA II drives
nvidia Geforce 6200 video card.

The computer is a server for a small office. Currently running SuSE 9.3 and
vmware workstation 5.5. Windows Small business server (no choice here) runs
as a virtual machine.

I had problems right from the beginning with 4GB ram, so I used just 2GB to
get things up and running. I want to stress that this combination with 2 GB
RAM has been completely stable and has run fine for 6 months.

With all 4 GB installed the machine will not start Suse, nor can I do an
install. Tried again yesterday and today.

I flashed the BIOS to the latest version, dated 12/9/05. I then ran the
MemTest included with SuSE 10.0 for 13 hours and did 9 full passes with no
memory errors. I then tried to boot the currently installed 9.3. It does
fine for part of the boot up process and then hangs. It gets to the part
that says press Esc for more information, and I press escape and it
identifies hardware and continues booting. It doesn't always hand at the
same place, but it never reaches the KDE login screen. I take out the 2 GB
of RAM and it boots and runs fine.

I then tried to install SuSE 10.0. It boots from the DVD, I press
installation, it gets to the language screen fine, and gets tot he hardware
screen and begins probing for hardware. nce it hung on probing for floppy
disks, the next time it hung on probing IDE. I thne tried installation with
ACPI disabled and it hung even earlier. I then tried the Safe Mode
installation and that also hung. I then went back tot he 9.3 DVD and that
hung on installation.

I then removed the 2 GB of Ram and it boots fine and is now happily running.

Have you tried both sets of 2 GB by themselves, verify all the memory is
good? Perhaps there's a problem with the motherboard? Also, the boot
up memory test is not exhaustive. There may be a problem it doesn't
catch. Try each set of 2 GB and run the SUSE memory test.

Flakey memory can cause the appearance of other problems that aren't
really there.



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