Just received the parts for a new system today and got everything put together and now I'm having problems with getting the system to boot. First, here is the hardware in the system:

MSI P6N SLI Platinum motherboard
Intel Core Duo E6600 2.4Ghz
MSI nVidia 8600GTS with 256 MB ram
4GB G.Skill (4x1GB) DDR2 PC6400
500GB Samsung SATA HD
Thermaltake 500W power supply

Basicaly, the system will not boot with either all the memory installed, or the memory installed in a duel-channel configuration. I can get it to boot when I install any of the four DIMMs in slots 1 and 2 on the motherboard, but the system runs in single-channel mode. Any other configuration will cause it to not boot, and I do not get any POST beep codes. Diagnostics LEDs for the motherboard indicate that the system is trying to initialize the memory. I made sure that the timing settings were set to the manufacturer's suggested values (5-5-5-15@1.9v), as well as values that have worked for other people who have the same motherboard (4-4-4-12@2.1v). I underclocked the speed to 667Mhz from 800Mhz as some people seemed to have issues at 800Mhz, and ran the system with only essencial hardware (psu, motherboard, and video card) to see if there was some conflict. No matter what I did, it still performed the same way.

I've contacted MSI support and am waiting for them to get back to me. In the meantime I figured I'd check on here to see if someone has a suggestion of anything I might have missed while trouble shooting the problem.

Also, I was going to go ahead and install and setup my OS, but it was really slow in loading and I kept getting a message like this:

Boot Sector!!!
VIRUS: Continue Yes No

Don't know if this is my BIOS being over protective or if it thinks XP is a virus, but it only comes up when its loading informaiton off the install cd (and yes, it is a legit copy )

Preemptive thanks for help

6/25/2007 11:41:12 PM

Is the memory approved by MSI for this motherboard?

I've read that a lot of motherboards don't support a lot of >1.8v DDR26400.

6/26/2007 12:16:06 AM

you've done all the right things, all signs point to a mis-configuration of the memory

it could be incompatibility due to quantity of memory, it could be that the NB needs a bit more voltage to hit 1.9v on memory and those timings, it could be you have a bad slot on the motherboard, or it could just be that one of the sticks in your pairs is bad... but if no combination works in just 1 & 3 (no sticks in 2 & 4) then signs point to either a bad setting or a bad slot on the motherboard itself.

i don't have any other ideas of what it could be, you've hit the major stuff. best bet is MSI tech support now.

have you tried just the SPD default memory settings?

[Edited on June 26, 2007 at 12:34 AM. Reason : .]

6/26/2007 12:33:48 AM

i'll tell you one thing

your power supply is way to small, regardless of what the specs said was "acceptable"

i have a 680W ps and i have trouble running much hardware past my 7800 gt. get a muuuch stronger psu.

6/26/2007 3:24:57 AM

^ what sort of crack are you on?

6/26/2007 4:31:47 AM

he's got a core duo, an 8600, 4 gb of ram, and a 500gb hd. 500 w isn't gonna cut it. don't forget about cdrom drives, , any lights he may or may not have, etc

and fans

[Edited on June 26, 2007 at 5:24 AM. Reason : jank]

6/26/2007 5:03:53 AM

^You guys always overestimate wattage. He could probably run that on a <400 psu. There's a few sites out there that help you do a quick estimate on the wattage you'll need. Here's a good one:

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

I did a rough estimate of what LittleZZ needed and it was under 300. It even accounts for OCing, and any additional cards, W cooling, pumps, etc.

Quote :

"i have a 680W ps and i have trouble running much hardware past my 7800 gt. get a muuuch stronger psu."

That is not an issue with the psu, or the psu is bad. My previous build was a Pentium D with a Nvidia 7950gx2 and it all ran perfectly on a 480watt psu w/ 3 hd's and various other pci cards.

[Edited on June 26, 2007 at 9:23 AM. Reason : .]

6/26/2007 9:05:08 AM

thanks for the replies.

I received a responce from MSI support and one thing that caught my eye is that they say the board requires the ATX 12V power connection to be 18A or greater. My power supply's 12V connection is 14A. Would this cause an issue? Nothing on their site, or the spec on newegg, says that it requires 18A on the 12V connection. I'll probably just pick up another power supply from tigerdirect at lunch just to see if it makes a difference if nothing else works.

I'm going to try flashing the BIOS when I get home. Tried to find the latest update last night but their site didn't seem to have much on my board and it was late so I never got around to it.

One other thing I'll look at when I get home is the grounding spacers between the case and the board. I used my old case so I left the spacers where the were, but now that I think about it, there were one or two that didn't coorespond to holes on the board. While it was the same with the old board, and I never had an issue, I'm wondering if it would be possible to short something through one of those spacers that isn't on a hole.

6/26/2007 9:46:48 AM

Well board was DOA. After dealing with MSI's extremely crappy customer service and spending way too much time trouble shooting I contacted newegg who gave me an RMA for a refund on the board. I went a head and bought a new board so I wouldn't have to wait 2 weeks and it arrived yesterday. Got everything set up and the system POSTs fine with duel channel memory and all 4GB. Go to install XP and everything goes to shit agian.

Can't install XP without the RAID drivers for the board, and the board doesn't come with driver floppy in the box. Have to go to their website and get the zip file containing the driver. Long story short, I try several times and the floppy never works and I cannot install the driver. Went to Best Buy this morning and got a USB floppy to try and see if it was just an issue with my drive. Got the same message as I was getting before "txtsetup.oem" could not be found. I've verified that the file is on the disk by hooking the USB floppy up to my laptop.

Also, I'm seeing an issue with the setup hanging while copying files. This was occuring more often than not before I upped the memory voltage. Setup didn't hang for a couple times and then it started again. Could my memory be the issue with all of this? Supposidly the board supports it, though not "officially". Anyway, just wanted to see if anyone had more suggestions since the problems don't seem to want to go away.

6/30/2007 12:00:11 PM

My MSI board defaulted to a lower voltage than my memory required and I had issues with BSODs. My K8N Neo4 Platinum defaulted at 1.7 I think. Your RAM requires 2.0-2.1 v. Make sure the bios is set to send that much voltage. It will probably be in MSI's red range (danger), but ignore that.

6/30/2007 3:19:24 PM

Had the same problem with the raid drivers, its fucking shit. I had to install the OS without raid first, install all the software that came with the motherboard, make raid driver disk then start over and reinstall on the raid setup

6/30/2007 3:24:54 PM

woohoo...9 days later and i have a working system (fingers crossed for stability)

For the RAID disk issue, the problem was that originally, since I didn't have access to a floppy drive, I had to go to a friend's and use his. He runs Linux and apparently, even though the disk had already been formatted, unzipping the files and copying the using Linux caused them to not be detected during the install. Once I got access to a drive, I put the folder containing the files on the disk and not just the files. Once I used a disk written from a Windows box, containing only the files, it worked.

The issue with the install freezing at "Starting Windows" was resovled by removing 2 of my dimms. After removing the dimms the setup continued and I was able to install XP. After getting Windows installed, I put the 2 dimms back in the box and XP sees all "3" GB of ram...stupid 32bit OS.

I have to say this experice has made me want to never deal with MSI agian. They refused to pay for shipping the defective board back to them. No toll-free phone support (number is from California). No weekend or off hours phone support (hours are M-T 9:30-5:30, F 9-4 PST). When you do talk to someone at support and complain, they pretty much say "that's our policy" and refuse to let you talk to anyone else. One support guy I talked to told me that there was no one above him that could assist me in my issue with refunding the shipping on the DOA board. Also, I have yet to find an actual "customer support" contact. Everything is either tech support or RMA support. Oh well, I'm just glad that its working now. Thanks to all who replied.

[Edited on June 30, 2007 at 3:38 PM. Reason : .]

6/30/2007 3:36:39 PM

opps missed this thread again. Yeah you can't install 4 gigs of ram in xp32. Well you can but it'll show up as 3 something. Also xp won't give more than 2 gigs of ram to any one application, unless you patch it. Oh and yeah bump the mem voltage up to 2.0/2.1.

6/30/2007 4:20:03 PM

^heh heh...a little late and a dollar short, but thanks anyway. I was aware of the "3GB" limitation but didn't realize you couldn't install it with the 4 dimms in. Also, might not have mentioned it above, but voltage has been set to 2.1 and so far so good. Well, except for when my BIOS decided that my external USB SATA drive needed to be the primary boot device. Nothing like killing yourself over troubleshooting a system for a week, getting it to finally work, only to have it boot to a cursor prompt to really send you over the edge. After a nice bout of cursing and throwing things, I booted to the BIOS and found the problem.

6/30/2007 4:43:21 PM

Tell me about it. I Spent a few days getting my system to run. Getting 4 gigs of ram to run on vista 64 on my mobo and ram were a bitch. I think i overclock it so much, i cause the trouble for myself. But it's happily stable at 3.6 right now, so i'm content.

6/30/2007 4:53:57 PM