New HTPC. DOA Parts? (1 Viewer)

[Banyon]

As the title says, just built a new computer for Media Center purposes (specs at bottom), and I have a really weird issue. When I boot the computer a blue or red matrix like screen appears (picture below). Now all the connections on the board are right, the parts are compatible. I've never run into this issue before, never even heard of it.

Blue Screen
Red Screen

By moving 1 stick of RAM from bank 2, to bank 3, it went away till about half way through the Windows install when I get the red screen. Tried even taking them out of Dual Channel setup and putting them in banks 2 and 3, also tried the rest of the combinations, 1-4, 2-4....ect.

Now my best guess is probably DOA RAM or a mobo with defective memory banks... But knowing me its probably something stupid like and incorrect voltage.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz
ASUS M2A-VM Socket AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Patriot eXtreme Performance 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Now my best guess is probably DOA RAM or a mobo with defective memory banks... But knowing me its probably something stupid like and incorrect voltage

These are 2.2v according to the website, another thought is the power supply good.

a real bugger to locate fault if you do not have access to alternative parts to be able to test with, so it will not even work with a single stick of ram installed (unlikely that both have failed).

Sorry not to be more helpful, but without it in front of me, cannot test.

No pre boot beeps being heard, what alarm\fault functions does your motherboard support.

 

[wishywashy]

If you had a plugin video card I would say that is bad. I saw that when an AGP card took a dump.
I would suspect MB, but I have been wrong before

 

[Paul S]

Does it POST (Power On Self Test) and beep like Paranoid Delusion mentioned?

Can you enter the BIOS? If so, you usually can check the memory that is installed. If any are bad, they will not show up as being installed.

You could also try booting a "Live" CD of Linux Ubuntu. It won't install, but run off of your memory. If your memory is bad, this may not be a good idea.

 

[Marcusb]

Can you plug a different gfx card in to the board? My first thought is the gfx card, followed by the power supply.
If you have a spare gfx card then it's a simple thing to check and rule out. It's unlikely that both chips of RAM are faulty, even if they were a matched pair.

 

[Banyon]

T answer questions, It does reach the POST when I changed the location of the memory. It does not beep because there is no system speaker on the board, nor in my case. In the bios, all appears to be fine, over 1Gb of ram showing.

I can not boot a LIVE CD for linux, I have 4 different ones and non of them will boot.

Only one actualy gives me and error, and I have no clue what it means.

error

17179569.760000 ..MP-BIOS bug:8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
17179570.152000 PCI: Cannont allocate resource region 1 of device 0000:00:14.0

 

[Paul S]

The first error is (was) a common error. It refers to a bug with some mobos that support dual processors. It should not prevent Linux from booting. Here is an explanation of IO-APIC:
http://developer.osdl.org/dev/robustmutexes/src/fusyn.hg/Documentation/i386/IO-APIC.txt

The second error I'm not sure about. It is a PCI error, so that means that a PCI board is causing a problem. Do you have a PCI-express video card? Maybe there is a conflict with the IRQ. This sometimes can be changed in the BIOS. Otherwise, if it is caused by other cards, try switching them to other slots.

 

[Banyon]

Thats the thing Paul, I have Onboard video, and nothing in the PCI slots... nothing at all.

I think the board is just totaly screwed so I'm sending it back.