Gigabyte MA78GPM-DS2H... hardware problem tracking...

[SimonBland]

Dear all,

After lurking on the forums for some time I decided to take the plunge and build my own HTPC to take full advantage of my Hd TV.
I went for the Gigabyte MA 78GPM-DS2H board after reading several good reviews, and always liking gigabyte boards for reliability... but I'm having some problems, that perhaps some kind soul could shed some light on.

Components:
Phenom 9350e
Gigabyte MA 78GPM-DS2H
Corsair 4GB: 2X2GB UNBUFF DDR2 667MHZ 2X240 DIMM 5-5-5-18
LG Blu ray playher
Western Digital Green Power 750Gb sata
Zalman cooling fan set up in Antec Fusion Case
Vista ultimate 64

The system posts ok, and then starts to install vista... then one of 2 things happens. It gets to the 'loading windows files' screen and stalls before the bar indicating how far it has got completes or the 'loading windows files' screen disappear and is replaced by the windows boot loader screen saying there is an error with the install (all zeros)

So far I have narrowed it down quite a bit. Its not the blu ray or the hard disk, nor anything flaky with the power supply. I also tried vista 32 in case it was windows that but the same problem occurs.
I've tried out the memory in another machine and it works fine too. Also I've gone down to only one memory module and tried out all the memory slots in the 78GPm with it to no avail.

By the looks of things it is loading the windows files into memory then faulting before it writes the files to the hard disk. I'm wondering does anyone know if there is a memory incompatibility between the mobo and the memory, or if it could be a motherboard fault? (the other memory I have to hand is too fast for the board to try)

Any help you could give would be very gratefully received

Simon (apologising his first post has to be a call for help)

[pantonious]

Originally Posted by SimonBland

(the other memory I have to hand is too fast for the board to try)

RAM will run at the speed the motherboard tells it to run at.

the only way the RAM won't work is if its DDR3.

i would give the other RAM a try.

Also, what setting is the SATA controller on in the BIOS? SATA/RAID/AHCI??

[nuby]

Hi,

I had the problem with the MA 78GPM-SH2, I could not install with 4 GB.
Installed with 2GB (from scratch) and added the extra 2 GB AFTER fully installed.
If that doesnt help, the Mobo could be faulty.

Cheers

[dobbyb]

The RAM that you have currently in the mobo is not in the list of supported modules from Gigabytes website:
http://www.gigabyte.com.au/FileList/...78gpm-ds2h.pdf

Try and get some DDR2 800 RAM and see what happens.

When I installed Vista 64 on the GA78GPM-DS2H, I had 4GB in dual channel and it installed no problems.

[gotkids]

The RAM should be fine, if it can post it doesn't mind the RAM. I would be making sure that you have the BIOS right up to date and would set the HDDs to SATA mode. Swap over the SATA cables aswell and change the SATA ports (I've had a bad run lately on faulty SATA cables).

[Aldo]

There have been some well documented issues noted with the predecessor to this mobo running Phenom cpus:


http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3279&p=1

This mobo however is certified to run Phenoms. I can't help but wonder if it is a mobo problem. If you read some of the reviews at Newegg, there seems to be a fair smattering of failures:

tp://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductR...82E16813128341


I have just bought one of these too. I hope it isn't a mobo problem.


Lincoln.

[ExtremePC]

Wish i saw this earlier, with some chipsets if you have more than 3gb ram installed Vista fails to install.

Install vista with 2gb in, then sp1 then put the other 2gb back in.

[DDH]

Thanks ExtremePC, hadn't struck that before. Have just installed this mobo for a mate with 2Gb (in fact just tidying up the install now), and plan to use the same mobo for my next MCE with 4Gb. You may well have saved me pain!