Vista SP1 install, now I have a dead board - RESOLVED !

[WalkinTarget]

Background:
You guys may remember the thread that I made about helping out two kids at school that had shown an interest in PCs, so I had enough spare parts to build a rig and they watched and helped as I explained everything from AGP to PCIe, DDR1 to DDR3, IDE to SATA and then some ....

Sob Story
Well, the PC was sitting there, patiently awaiting my Vista Ultimate DVDs from yet another MS promotion. So the DVDs finally came and I set about installing Vista Ultimate 64 on this modest build:

Asrock 775 Dual-VSTA
Intel e2180 CPU (2.0@2.9)
Seagate 320gb HD (x2)
MSI 7900GS 256mb PCIe
Super Talent 4gb DDR2-667
Aerocool ZeroDBA 500w PSU

It was running quite well with just the basic Vista install and all updates on it, and altho I had no use for it, the box was just there to be used as a test rig. So I notice my main rig had been bugging me for a week about installing SP1, so I decided against it and then went to the Ultimate rig. Ahh, what the hell, I let it load and it took about 45 minutes. It finished up, then asked to reboot to complete the install, and thats when things went south.

I answered yes to the reboot, and it never restarted, just sat there at the 'preparing to restart' screen. So I powered it off after an hour, and now it WON'T EVEN POST !!!!!

No beeps .... no video signal .. NO NUTHIN' !!

I've tried reseating the RAM, and checking for anything loose (video card, SATA cable) but .. its dead. The ONLY thing that I did before the Vista SP1 install was swap the 2gb RAM that was in that rig for the 4gb that I bought to run, thinking that if I have Ultimate 64 bit, I might as well have 4gb of RAM too.

So tonight I will swap out the 4gb for the 2gb, but it was running fine before then, so I don't think that will fix a darn thing. The only good news is I had an identical Asrock board that went back for RMA to Asrock over 2 weeks ago, so any day now I should be getting a replacement board that should fix my issues.

Just goes to show you that PC hardware is sometimes areal crapshoot, and even the simple stuff can sometimes roll over and die on you.

[Dead...Again]

I can't imagine a SP install causing a system to quit booting.
Does it power on at all? Were you able to boot with the 4GB before installing SP1 (sounds like yes)? Did you replace the 2GB with 4GB or add 2 more sticks to make it 4GB (also sounds like yes)? You could also try just booting to one of the new sticks. You might want to check the voltage required for the RAM too. I agree, though, that if it booted fine with the 4GB before and you haven't changed any BIOS settings, it probably isn't the memory either.

[WalkinTarget]

Dead, it powers on and lights up like a Christmas tree ... I bought all Aerocool white LED fans, so there are four chrome fans plus CCL tubes all lit up, it just doesn't beep at POST !! I replaced the 2gb kit with a 4gb kit of identical RAM, Super Talent DDR-667 stuff. It ran with that RAM in it for a few days, but I did notice just before the SP1 install that Vista was only seeing 2gb of RAM, hence my thought that the RAM was being weird.
I pulled the CMOS battery and jumped the CLR_CMOS pin as well to flush any wonky voltage settings out of the BIOS, so there's no way its a voltage issue.
I am leaning towards the RAM tossing its virtual cookies on me, so I'll try the original 2gb kit and hope for the best. I was just sort of really blown away that the damn thing rolled over and died ... I saw it wasn't POST'ing, and I thought, well Hells Bells .. I'm glad this wasn't my main rig !

[juneau]

Dead, it powers on and lights up like a Christmas tree ... I bought all Aerocool white LED fans, so there are four chrome fans plus CCL tubes all lit up, it just doesn't beep at POST !! I replaced the 2gb kit with a 4gb kit of identical RAM, Super Talent DDR-667 stuff. It ran with that RAM in it for a few days, but I did notice just before the SP1 install that Vista was only seeing 2gb of RAM, hence my thought that the RAM was being weird.
I pulled the CMOS battery and jumped the CLR_CMOS pin as well to flush any wonky voltage settings out of the BIOS, so there's no way its a voltage issue.
I am leaning towards the RAM tossing its virtual cookies on me, so I'll try the original 2gb kit and hope for the best. I was just sort of really blown away that the damn thing rolled over and died ... I saw it wasn't POST'ing, and I thought, well Hells Bells .. I'm glad this wasn't my main rig !

Surely you have enough kit spare to test one thing at a time. I imagine your house is like a PC hardware store.

[Sirex]

One of my PC's does something similar, its a faulty PSU on my end thats causing mine.

Try another PSU.

[WalkinTarget]

Hardware store ?? Well, sorta ... I just don't have price tags on my parts:
http://www.wtslair.com/parts/parts001.jpg

Shelf storage, boxed and named, as organized as I can get it:
http://www.wtslair.com/parts/parts003.jpg

Yet another shelf full:
http://www.wtslair.com/parts/parts004.jpg

So yea, I'm good to go .. I just gotta open one up and swap RAM to another. Anybody wanna buy a rig or two ??

[WalkinTarget]

Sirex, I hope its not the PSU, as I have less than 30 hours on the thing since I bought it. Unless the board itself damaged the PSU, I will test that next after the RAM. I'll reply back by 8:30 on the verdict.

[WalkinTarget]

Update: Popped out one stick and rebooted .. its POSTing ! Had no luck with my previous overclock, so I set it at default and it seems OK, altho it looks like the SP1 glitch hosed the OS. I tried 'Last known good configuration' and that hung at the green status bar that signals the OS is going through the motions of loading.

Will try a repair install next.

[WalkinTarget]

Seems to be working fine now. Just for grins I will try the second 2gb stick in there, but the Vista SP1 install actually picked up where it left off and finished up after a reboot. I had a lot of updates to install even after that (131mb worth even after SP1 ??) but I still question the board itself, which is why I hope to swap it out with the RMA board once that comes back.