Bl***y thing!!

[ukdan]

Hi people. At the risk of sounding repetitive, i need some more help with regards to my ongoing problem (see "ram problem"). The story continues.....I've now had 2 different 1gb memory sticks and they both did the same thing ie freeze my pc after 10 minutes or so. I tried using 2 x 512 sticks and they seemed more or less fine in that my pc didn't freeze so i went back to my friendly pc retailer who very kindly agreed to exchange my 1gb for 2 x 512mb. Got it so far? Anyway, i got home all excited this afternoon and fitted the memory. I booted up and decided to watch episode 9 of the Soprano's. I know i got to get out more. Five minutes into it the pc froze again!!!!!!!! Do you think its just a case of my pc not liking 1gb of memory, whatever shape or form? I'm almost (but not quite) at my wits end. Where do i go from here? I'd appreciate some help and/or guidance off you very knowledgable people before i go totally bald. Not that theres anything wrong with being bald, of course.
Cheers in advance.

 

[ukdan]

Sorry for going on but i forgot to mention, I've now got 768mb in and it seems fine. Hope that wasn't the Murray Walker kiss of death!!!

 

[JonD]

Hi,

I have just read your original thread re replacement memory etc and pretty much everything has been covered.

The only thing i can think of seeing as you have tried a few different types of memory with the same results it may not be the memory itself causing the problem.

What BIOS revision do you have on your motherboard, there's a good chance that the one you have may be an early revision and a later BIOS has been released to resolve memory addressing issues amongst others. It could also be an issue with the memory controller on the MOBO.

How old is the PC? is there much dust in it? if there was you may find that giving it a good blow out with compressed air may help, remove the memory from their slots and give the slots a good old blow out as there could be dust causing the problem.

You say that it hangs after 5 or so minutes, do you see anything in the Win XP event viewer?

Jon.

 

[ukdan]

Thanks for your help here Jon. This is where i find i don't know as much as i thought about pc's. LOL. The pc is about 3 years old now. I've been told i could try a BIOS upgrade but i can't seem to find one, if i'm looking in the right places!! It seems my BIOS version is BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 09/11/2002. As for the Event viwer, i'm not so sure what i should be looking for. I've read through it but it might as well be in Greek. Know any good hammer suppliers?
Cheers again.

 

[ukdan]

Also, does it matter what the speed of the memory is? The stuff i've got in now is 133 and all the new memory i try is 400.

 

[JonD]

I have just been doing some more research into your problem and have found out the following:

That board supports a maximum of 2Gb of RAM.

The BIOS on that board is a cut down version of the normal one supplied by MSI, in particular it doesn't have a lot of the memory settings re timing, CAS latency etc. Not that you would normally need to play with those.

The BIOS revision you have would appear to be the first release, i would be fairly certain that there would have been several releases following it.

I can find the MSI BIOS but you won't be able to apply it to your Medion system as the will have a block preventing you from doing so.

Could you let me have the model (MD5000) at a guess and serial number of your PC so i can dig some more.

 

[JonD]

Also, does it matter what the speed of the memory is? The stuff i've got in now is 133 and all the new memory i try is 400.

That shouldn't make a difference, thats just the rated speed. If you put 133 in a machine that want's 400 you would have a problem.

Jon.

 

[ukdan]

Cheers Jon, i really appreciate all the work you put in for me. According to the label on the back of my pc, the model is "pc mt6" and the type is "med mt 163". The medion s/n is 11109010050648. I did look at the medion website for updates but the instructions tell me to copy the update into the E folder. Problem being, i got rid of all that when i put the new hard drive in so there is no E drive. I have been told i can upgrade the bios using a boot disk but i don't want to try until i'm sure incase i blow the house up!!!

 

[JonD]

Cheers Jon, i really appreciate all the work you put in for me. According to the label on the back of my pc, the model is "pc mt6" and the type is "med mt 163". The medion s/n is 11109010050648. I did look at the medion website for updates but the instructions tell me to copy the update into the E folder. Problem being, i got rid of all that when i put the new hard drive in so there is no E drive. I have been told i can upgrade the bios using a boot disk but i don't want to try until i'm sure incase i blow the house up!!!

That's not a problem.

Right, the correct BIOS update for your computer is as follows:

http://www1.medion.de/downloads/download.pl?id=245&type=treiber&filename=biomd5kv11.exe&lang=uk

As regards extracting to E: just ignore that, i have amended their instructions below which should help, the bits i have changed are in italics:

Medion AG
Bios Update
1.1H
Supply date 12.10.2005
Made downloads 172054

Bios Update of the MD 5000 (Rev 1) mainboard
+++Instructions to update your system bios +++

1. Unzip the downloaded file by double clicking on it, it will then prompt you for a location, just type something like c:\newbios

2. Afterwards restart your PC with the Application-/ Support-CD.

3. At the MS Windows CD-ROM-Bootmenue choose "Boot from CD-ROM".

4. After that select "MS-DOS Prompt" in the Application-/Support-CD Startmenue .

5. Finally execute the md5000.bat file which can now be found at Partition C: into your specified folder.

You do this as follows:

At the command prompt type the following:

c:

You should now see the following:

c:\


Type cd newbios (or whatever you called the folder you extracted to)

You should now see:

C:\newbios

Type dir, then hit return, you should hopefully see the file md5000.bat in the list.

Now type md5000.bat and hit return, this will launch the batch file that will update your BIOS.



6. Now start the update procedure by pressing any key.

7. After the bios update please reboot your system.

Please be aware that you noticed the original bios setting before starting the update, because some values may have changed afterwards.


Important:
For any errors, caused by the execution of this update, we don´ t accept any responsibility for damage or lost of data.The customer agrees with that fact by executing the update.


The above should carry out the BIOS update, you can confirm this by looking at the screen when it boots following the upgrade.

Good luck! Hope it works out OK, it stopped raining here so i'm gonna go cut some more timber for my deck

Jon.

 

[ukdan]

Thanks for all this again Jon. I'm nearly there, however, this is probably going to sound absolutely pathetic!! I made a MS-DOS boot disk so i could do all this and when i reboot with the disk in and get the a prompt, it won't let me change to the c directory, saying its an invalid drive spec. Am i just being really simple?

 

[JonD]

Thanks for all this again Jon. I'm nearly there, however, this is probably going to sound absolutely pathetic!! I made a MS-DOS boot disk so i could do all this and when i reboot with the disk in and get the a prompt, it won't let me change to the c directory, saying its an invalid drive spec. Am i just being really simple?

Probably not, i suspect that you have formatted the volume as NTFS so a standard MS-DOS cannot read that format.

Right, here goes:

Copy the files that you extracted to C:\newbios to another floppy, they are only 303K so will fit no problem.

Boot from your MS-DOS disk and then put the second floppy with the BIOS update in.

Follow the instructions i gave you before but replace C:\ with A:\ and you should be good to go.

Jon.

 

[Softus]

there's a good chance that the one you have may be an early revision and a later BIOS has been released to resolve memory addressing issues amongst others.

What? In what way is the BIOS software involved in access to system memory?

It could also be an issue with the memory controller on the MOBO.

Much more likely. Or a motherboard fault. Or secondary cache.

Give it up as a bad job and get a new m/board and CPU and set of RAM.

 

[JonD]

there's a good chance that the one you have may be an early revision and a later BIOS has been released to resolve memory addressing issues amongst others.

What? In what way is the BIOS software involved in access to system memory?

It could also be an issue with the memory controller on the MOBO.

Much more likely. Or a motherboard fault. Or secondary cache.

Give it up as a bad job and get a new m/board and CPU and set of RAM.

Yeah, if it was my PC i would rid the MOBO. However i'm just trying to help the guy to exhaust all the non cost fixes before going down that route.

Regarding point 1, The BIOS has memory related settings in it regarding timing etc which are sent to the memory controller IIRC, however the cut down OEM one does not.

Point 2, This board is known for blown capacitors which could also cause the problem or any of a 1000 different things. The BIOS has been hacked around with to re-enable memory settings by individuals but i would not recommend this as i don't want to screw someone elses computer.

You seem to have some sort of issue with me but this site is primarily about helping people so i thought not to attack people who try to help, there are many forums on here where i could provide an answer but as i do not work professionaly in those fields i don't comment as the anserws from the guys who do it for a living may say the same thing but they actually know!

I have been in IT for the last 10 years and have 10's of thousands of hours experience with computers, both supporting and building.

Dan, if the above doesn't work or solve the problem it's one less thing it can be. You can email me @ jon @ infomatpc dot co dot uk cos i won't tolerate a personal attack from another member.

Jon.

A+, MCP, MCSE NT, MCSE 2K, NTCIP...............

 

[Softus]

You seem to have some sort of issue with me

Where did this come from? Did I make any personal comment whatsoever?

I have been in IT for the last 10 years and have 10's of thousands of hours experience with computers, both supporting and building.

I'm very pleased for you

i won't tolerate a personal attack from another member.

Blimey! Aren't you just a little paranoid?

 

[gcol]

No he's not paranoid Softus. It's just the way you come across on certain posts.
I'm not looking for an argument - just trying to explain how you come across sometimes.