Dying motherboard?

[Marenghi]

My problem in a nutshell; I have 8GB of RAM installed but only 4GB usable and my hard drives are not being detected. System specs are on the left in my profile

Sorry for the forthcoming short story but hopefully all this waffle will provide enough details about this situation;

installed a SSD on friday and installed windows 7 (previous win 7 installation is on a hard drive that isn't being used any more) and everything worked fine. next day i'm browsing system specs etc and see that my CPU temps have risen a few degrees on idle so decide to reapply some thermal compound. Once completed i boot in the BIOS and notice my CPU temp is much worse than before (the compound was fairly dried out but thought it would be worth a shot) so i shut it down and buy some new compound. once the new compound is applied temps are fine, boot up again and BIOS is showing 4gb ram installed and no hard drives detected!

I've managed to reinstall windows again on the SSD as that was the only drive showing up to install to. however i cannot get my other two hard drives (normal 7200RPM) to be detected.

For the latest install I swapped the SATA numbers around on the drives so the SSD is 0 and the others are 1 and 2 respectively. Would this have anything to do with why they cannot be detected? to makes things a little more complicated and i'm unsure as to whether this would make a difference, the old MBR is installed on the 256GB drive but that was for the old OS install, not the current one.

As for the RAM, doing some googleing I see that it appears to be a common problem with the 1156 socket and a common symptom of the CPU/heatsink in need of being reseated with only 1 stick of RAM being in working order. BIOS shows 4GB usable, windows shows 8 I've tried the following;

- Had both RAM sticks in slots 1 & 3, now after the problem 3 is the only slot that works, tried in slots 2 & 4 and will not work. also tried with just one stick (for both) and no luck so dodgy stick can be ruled out. PC will only boot with RAM in slot 3
- set voltage to 1.4v (RAM should be 1.35v but no setting in BIOS for that) and the auto setting was set at 1.5v
- there is no option in the BIOS for memory remapping
- latest version of BIOS installed
- reseated CPU & heatsink 3 times
- blown dust out of the RAM slots with compressed air
- checked msconfig\boot and max memory is unchecked
- pulled my hair out



help please

edit - on the plus side the SSD is very good, even in SATA 2

[mikeo01]

Could be your motherboard dying. I had this problem... random BSOD errors pointing to my graphics card? No it was the PCI-E slot. 1 RAM slot decided to die, it caused the RAM not to be detected, caused freezing and BSOD. RAM was fine, tried it in different slots.

Try resetting the CMOS, either take the CMOS battery out or reset using the jumpers of your motherboard.

You have tried reinstalling Windows, which is what I did, was the boot sector MBR. That was my issue, but because your BIOS cannot detect it, that is a different story.

My problem was Windows couldn't detect my hard drive, but the BIOS could. Have you tried different cables? Because that was my problem too, a defective cable.

How old is the motherboard?

I would install the MBR on the same partition, not on a separate HDD, that makes things complicated.

Your BIOS should be able to see the 8GB RAM, its up to Windows to tell you if it can use it all. But seening you cannot see it in the BIOS, I doubt the RAM is faulty. Could be the actually slot.

Considering you have tried reapplying the thermal paste, tried having a manual fan on it for the time being to see if it makes any difference. You will then know if its cool enough and rule out the CPU as the problem.

[shaithis]

If only 1 RAM slot will work, I fear that the mobo is dead/dying.

Best bet is to take it out of the system and test it on a wooden/cardboard surface to make sure there isn't a short somewhere.

The odd thing is...for the RAM slots and HDDs to go at the same time would probably take multiple issues....the RAM means either the physical board or the CPU have been damaged (RAM controller is in the CPU).....for the HDDs to go would be a defective south-bridge, PSU/PSU cables, SATA cables etc

[Marenghi]

thanks for the suggestions, i've reset the CMOS and no joy so i'll give the short circuit test a go when i have more time. thanks again

[GoNz0]

bolt on heatsinks can also warp the board, so can 3 of 4 pins being locked down on push pin HSF's