ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

[gcap]

Well,

I acquired another computer which is an HP mid sized tower. Geeze ! HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !! Found out it had a motherboard almost like the first one I am working on, just a few differences.

There was no video at all when I powered up so I opened up the box to see if there was anything out of order. That's when I saw the motherboard was pretty much the same one the first machine had. Shut down and unplugged from power, took out all of the memory and I got beeps from the motherboard. Put the memory back in, would not boot all of the way, shut down the machine and unplugged it. I then took out the CMOS battery and cleared the CMOS. Confirmed that the battery was good. Put the battery back in and tried to start it again. Ok, I noticed I got some video output this time but the machine still would not come up all of the way. Shut down and unplugged, took 1 stick of memory out. Ok, now the machine boots up fully and I can get to the desktop. Once there, I did a virus check with 2 different programs, not a single thing came up. I cleaned up unneeded files, temp files, and got some junk out of the hard drive with CC cleaner. I then cleaned up the registry. I did some more thinking and thought maybe I might have a bad stick of memory. I then played around with the memory sticks, they are 1 GB in size, tried them in the 4 slots that were available. If I have both sticks of memory in, I cannot get to the desktop, having only 1 will allow me to fully boot up, But boy, its' kind of a pain working with Vista Home Premium with 1 GB memory, slow ain't the freakin' word ! It doesn't matter which memory stick I have in, as long as there is only 1, the machine will boot up.

I was able to do a Windows memory test, that came up with no errors so maybe this problem is not with the sticks themselves. At this point, I am think it might be a marginal power supply or maybe bad caps near the memory. I could see there were 3 caps near where the memory is at.

Right now I have run out of ideas on what else I can try. If anyone else has suggestions at to what the problem might be, let me know as I am stumped.

Best,

Gcap

[Scenic]

Re: ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

http://www.memtest.org
The windows memory test (when booting from the DVD) is next to useless.
Memtest86+ is available as either a bootable CD image (.iso), as a standalone DOS .exe or as a package to make a bootable USB stick (which is what I use.. Good use for small/slow old USB sticks or mp3 players)

Testing the RAM in a known good motherboard helps to rule out motherboard woes.

I'd say caps first. It might work with only 1 stick because the caps, and with more than 1 stick the noise/garbage on the RAM voltage is just too much (more RAM sticks -> more load on the power circuit for them)

[PCBONEZ]

Re: ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

To stress the point...
.
- Test RAM on a known good board.
.
A board with caps issues can cause the RAM to screw up which can make the RAM test results look like the RAM is bad when there is nothing wrong with it.
.

[mariushm]

Re: ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

Download the ISO and burn a CD with the software above, or "burn" the data on a usb stick. Boot from CD or memory stick and test each memory module individually for about 10-15 minutes, the least. Ideally, you'd want to wait at least until there's a full test cycle for that memory module.

[gcap]

Re: ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

Thanks for the memtest info, downloaded that, I didn't know the Windows memory test wasn't so good.

**I'd say caps first. It might work with only 1 stick because the caps, and with more than 1 stick the noise/garbage on the RAM voltage is just too much (more RAM sticks -> more load on the power circuit for them)**

That is exactly what I was thinking.

The only other question I had was does it matter which slots the memory go into (there are 4) ? Originally the 2 memory sticks were in slots 3 and 4. But I put 1 stick in slot 4, it boots up fine. Also, tried the 1 stick in slot 1, that works fine also. As I said before, 2 sticks in will not allow me to boot up completely.

I just put in an order for some caps, hopefully I can get one of these systems up as that will help me to get the other one going. I just hope the unsoldering job isn't too bad.

Thanks for again for all of your help, folks. I will post an update as to what happens once I get the caps replaced on the first machine.

Gcap

[mariushm]

Re: ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

The motherboard threats the memory slots either as all four modules in a single channel or there's two channels, each with two memory slots. The later are the boards advertising Dual DDR, Dual DDR2 etc.

Generally, you want to install the memory modules in the first slot and keep going from there. With Dual DDR boards, you should put the memory modules in pair, to get better performance - usually the pairs of slots are colored differently if that's the case.

Some motherboards are designed to work with simpler memory modules in all four slots but with higher density memory modules, they may unable to work with those plugged in all memory slots.

I don't know if I explain it well, but I think it's because the signal wires going to the last memory slots may be slightly longer than the length of the other wires (it depends on the layout of the board). Also, the traces on the PCB from all memory slots are going through a small area of the board to the memory controller, so there can be some interference, noise etc and the signal can get degraded due to that.

Now in your case, it may be a simple case of having some pins in the memory slot dirty, simply put. I would try to visually inspect the memory slots to make sure the pins are not bent in such a way that they wouldn't make contact with the modules anymore. Then, I'd try cleaning the pins by using one of those cotton tip sticks (or a precision screwdriver with some cotton wrapped around the tip) dabbed in isopropylic alcohol.

[kc8adu]

Re: ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

had one of those a while back that would bsod.
each stick ok singly but errors at random with both.
caps were as in all of these boards,bad.
have another of these coming from a friend who got it at a thrift store.doing the same thing.the caps were tk

[Lordhagar]

Re: ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

I have experienced the same. I have 3 identical Fijitsu Scaleo computers. I started by using one, and I put win7 on it and 2gb memory. It worked for a few months, then it stopped working. After alot of checking and testing, I found out that it would boot with 1 or sometimes with 2 ram chips, but would hail after a few minutes. I checked memory, but couldn't find any error. I then grabbed one of the other Scaleos and big was my surprice when it behaved exactly the sam! Even more confused I was, when the 3rd one was like that too - and the 2 latter ones were new!. So now I have 3 pc's that dont work and they all have the HT2000 motherboard with 4 memory slots, 2 purple and 2 orange. I have been considering buying new motherboards, but I guess I can't get a hold of these old type MB anymore, so I would have to replace memory and cpu as well, making it more expensive. Is it hard to identify faulty caps and replace them?

Forgot to mention - I also had a Geoforce 9600GT installed. Could it be that the powersupply is too small? 150w max 350w continuous. I looked at the 6 caps on the side of the ram and they look ok.

[Uranium-235]

Re: ECS HT 2000 motherboard deja vu !

ht 2000 isnt the model#

look for it closer to the middle of the board

just try it without the video card but I bet that is not the problem

I wonder if the ram vrm for these boards is inadequate. Maybe a ram voltage OC if the board supports it might help...or make things worse