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[Torrenera Profile]

Well hello guys erm i'm new here but i was told that this was a good board to come on for techy advice and such, but anyway i'll get straight to the point 3 days ago me and my friend built an i5 PC, specs are as follows

Intel Core i5 750 2.66 non OC
XMS3 Corsair 1333 RAM 2x 2GB
Asus Maximus iii Formula
Zalman CNPS10X Cooler
2 Nvidia GTX 260 in SLI
Xtreme Music Sound Blaster sound card
Real Power M1000 Cooler Master PSU
Intel X25-M g2 80GB Solid State Drive
a 320 and 500 GB seagate hard drives 7200 RPM not too sure on the models
and 2 Asus Quick Track DVD drives

Well the build went well no problems till of course its time to boot the system, that's where the problems arose, basically at first the system would not post the monitor light flashed and nothing came on screen, at this point we were already starting to get confused, the red light on the mobo that cycles from CPU, DRAM, BOOT got stuck on the DRAM so we immediatelly thought it be a RAM problem so we re seated the 2 sticks moved them from the 1st slot and 3rd to the 2nd and 4th.

This time the system succesfully posted and we managed to get into the bios everything seemed ok installed windows on SSD and started to transfer some files over (Steam) i had to go out and leave the house so i told my flatmate to turn off the PC when the transfer was finished. After returning i turned on PC and it was fine to boot to windows, it refused though to install wireless drivers for my linksys n wireless adapter also i formatted my 500gb hdd because i got all the data i needed from it, so i decided to restart the system, at this point it started to fail to post again no idea why it just started again, it kept on doing this until i pressed the reset cmos button at the back of the mobo after doing this the system succesfully posted, but now it said that the bootmgr was missing, and would not boot to windows, i am not sure if its because of my formatting of the 500gb hdd maybe when installing windows 7 to the ssd it for some dumb a** reason put the boot file on the other hard drive, anyway i proceed to reinstall windows 7 (ohhh one of many reinstalls) at this point everything seems ok apart from the fact that when i enter my computer the system cant seem to see my 320 gb hdd, i went to the disk manager and i could see the drive there but it said that it was being used as "System" or something and it could not be formatted, so i am not sure why that is i guess that the boot file was again installed on a different hard drive?

Anyway i also notice in the windows system that my computer can see that i have 4gb of memory but only 1.99 GB are useable, i thought this was kinda weird even for a 32 bit system i thought it could go up to 2.5/3 gb of memory useage out of 4 anyway so my friend tells me to go into msconfig go to boot, and choose maximum memory at startum from advanced options i did that restarted and guess what every time it goes into starting windows the system would BSOD and give me a memory dump screen, it did this once then succesfully booted into windows then next time i restarted it kept on BSODing untill i did a recovery system restore and it stopped, i turned the option off this is what made me think that RAM is the problem so i went and got memtest86+ 4.00 and ran it for a good 2 hours 3 passes i thought should be enough came back with 0 errors so this confused me is it the RAM or not?

So then i went and checked SSD with chkdsk i know its not much but at least its something again came back with nothing wrong, anyway still confused as to why the hell i cldnt access my 320 gb and cld only use 1.99 gb of ram i decided to reinstall windows again i formatted the 320 and deleted the partition and did the same with the 500, oh i also updated my Asus mobo bios to the latest one 1305 i think mine came with like 0609 or something THANKS ASUS (Y) and also my SSD firmware to 02HD from 02HA i hear that the new firmware re enables TRIM or at least removes some bugs and i did notice the thing was faster anyway, after I reinstalld windows i go into my computer and guess waht it says i have the SSD as C but this time it cant see both my other HDDs and instead sees my usb stick and 2 CD drives D and E which i dont have and 2 DVD drives also called D and E which i DO have, this confused the hell out of me, so i removed the USB stick and when i did that both the CD drives disappeared as well so only the dvd drives and SSD remained, so i go back to the disk manager and see that the pc can see both the 320gb and 500gb but they are unallocated space, so i right click and make simple drives NTFS format out of both of them so now all 3 of my storage devices can be seen also my 2 dvd drives.

But still i dont get why it says i can only use 1.99 GB of ram and why it posts only only on the 3rd and 4th slot instead of 1st and 2nd is there a specific order for this mobo? are the 2nd and 4th primary? (although i have not reseated the ram to 1st and 3rd slot since bios update) also why wld it install the boot system file on a different hard drive? and why did my system BSOD when i changed the msconfig option? i'm not sure... I am not sure if any component is BORKED or if it was just the mobo being retarded.

Sorry to pull a Dante Alighieri divine comedy style size of writing but any help would be GREATLY apreciated after reinstalling windows like 6 times and changing options and fiddling with stuff i feel like throwing my PC right out of the window :D.

tl:dr my pc wldnt boot with my ram at first so changed slots and it worked, but then would not see one of my HDD's and it seems like boot file was installed on it instead of where i installed windows, it kept bsod'ing after i changed some settings to do with RAM in msconfig, and it says i can only use 1.99 GB out of 4 of RAM.

But yeah any suggestions, insight or pearls of wisdoms would be great thanks guys

Torrenera

[NT50 Profile]

First things first and DON'T get in a hurry...

Unplug all the drive except for the SSD, which i figure you wnat it to be the System/Boot drive.
Do a startup repair from the Win7 disk. (Also 32 bit will see the 4 gig but only use 3.25 of it)
Now don't plug in any other drie until u make sure it is running to perfection.
Let the system burn in for a couple of days.
Once burn in, then add ONE thing at a time.
O yea, be sure to read the manual on the placement of the memory. If you have two stick make sure to place them as the manual specs.

[Torrenera Profile]

First things first and DON'T get in a hurry...

Unplug all the drive except for the SSD, which i figure you wnat it to be the System/Boot drive.
Do a startup repair from the Win7 disk. (Also 32 bit will see the 4 gig but only use 3.25 of it)
Now don't plug in any other drie until u make sure it is running to perfection.
Let the system burn in for a couple of days.
Once burn in, then add ONE thing at a time.
O yea, be sure to read the manual on the placement of the memory. If you have two stick make sure to place them as the manual specs.

Hey thanks for the reply, and yeah i did place the RAM in as the manual said, but it only seems to see 1.99GB of it would you suggest re seating both sticks or even changing the slots they are in?

[NT50 Profile]

Try reseating and o changing the slots.

[Torrenera Profile]

I checked the mobo manual and the slots i put the RAM in are the A1 and B1 slots and it will only work if the 2 sticks are in those slots , im going to try and re seat it and tell you how it goes

[Torrenera Profile]

Mmm ok well re seating the RAM did not work still only sees 1.99 GB, i've read around as well and saw that this problem could be created by some pins in the CPU slot being bent? just throwing it out there, not sure if its accurate.

Anyway what do you suggest i do now?

[NT50 Profile]

Pins?

The new CPUs do not have per say pins anymore. They have contact surfaces.