XMS 3500 LL TwinX 2.0gb problem. Only 1.5gb recognized. :S

N

N31L

Obliviot
Hiya guys! I'm new to the forums so excuse me if i missed the "introduce yourself" thread somewhere...

I found the site while googling for issues with my memory. apparently it's made specially for the motherboard I have Asus A8N32 SLI Deluxe. Anyhow... I'm having problems getting the motherboard to recognize 2.0gb as useful memory.
At startup it says:
"1520 useable, 2048 installed"

I have the following hardware:
Asus A8n 32 sli deluxe
AMD X2 4200+
Corsair XMS 3500 LL TwinX 2.0gb - 2x 1.0gb
2x nVidia 6800gtx SLI - I know strange SLI setup...
Creative X-Fi
2x WD Raptor hdds
Enermax 600w ps

Any help would be amazing!

I took these pics so you wouldn't think i was retarded and built it upside down or anything or to answer any random questions about the system. As you can see it's my 2nd motherboard. The first one died on me a few months back.. The first one recognized the 2.0gb... strangely the 2nd one won't.
http://www.n31l.com/stor/image/computer/2.jpg
http://www.n31l.com/stor/image/computer/7.jpg

I'm going to poke around the forums a bit more and then i'm off to class.
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Hi N31L,

This is a strange problem. One thing you may want to try is moving the modules from slots 1&3 to 2&4 and see if that fixes anything. It's worth a shot, though it seems unlikely to help.

You might also want to see if a new BIOS is available for your motherboard. I'd also fish around in your BIOS to see if there are any memory related options that need to be enabled. Something like MMIO could be enabled if it's not, and if it's there to begin with.

"1520 useable, 2048 installed" really confuses me. I've never seen a message like that before.
 
N

N31L

Obliviot
I'm restarting now to switch the banks from 1/3 to 2/4. I did switch the memory around a day or so ago but in the same 2 slots. Dxdiag only recognizes 1520 installed as does everything else for that matter.

Shutting down and switching memory to banks 2/4... Should be back to post in a few seconds.

Okay... I switched to 2/4 and the motherboard is only showing 1520 still.

I did restart a few times to get a better look at the exact message and the startup screen says "1520 OK. (Installed memory size 2048)" then it goes down to detect the installed drives and Windows starts.

I poked around in the BIOS for about an hour the other day but found nothing memory related beyond the timing settings which i have set correctly for my memory/motherboard setup. I even tried the default settings in BIOS and nothing is helping. Right now i've double and triple checked the bios settings and i'm 100% sure the timings are all correct.

Apparently those who have the same problem don't know or... they don't exist lol. I can't find anything on this. I've been googling for days now trying to find any problems with any manufacturer's mobos/ram getting a similar error and come up empty handed.

I did realize that it could be the BIOS needs an update which there are some on the ASUS website for my model mobo but, I didn't have the same problem with my last motherboard. I am hoping it is as simple as the revision version was different on the original motherboard and the current one so that a simple update of the BIOS will help. I don't have a floppy drive but i just ordered one from newegg and i'll post in a few days to let you know if it helped or not.
 
Last edited:
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
You don't need a floppy drive more than likely. The ASUS Update software that comes with the board usually supports updating the BIOS using the .bin file you downloaded. You might want to check.
 
N

N31L

Obliviot
When I try to install the ASUS update utility, an error message appears and says:

Title: "ASUS BIOSINFO.DLL"
Message: "Unable to create NT driver service for BS_DEF.DLL"

When I press OK another message appears and reads:

Title: "Warning"
Message: "No ASUS motherboard
Installation will be abooted now."

Exactly as above even with "abooted" not aborted lol.

I'll restart a few times and keep trying to install the latest version and the one from the original disc. I'll try in safe mode a few times too.. bbl.

I restarted about 10/12 times and a few times in safe mode and tried both the most current version of the asus update utility and the one that was included on disc and both gave similar errors referencing NT.
 
Last edited:
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
I have a good feeling that your motherboard is at the heart of the problem. It won't allow you to use 2GB of ram and now will not even be detected by the ASUS software.

I'd recommend downloading CPU-z:
http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-139.zip

Read the motherboard tab once it's opened and see if everything matches up. I have a feeling if the ASUS updater couldn't detect your board, CPU-z will be inaccurate as well.
 
N

N31L

Obliviot
I have CPU-Z but it has always detected this motherboard correctly and everything else for that matter. It reports the following under each tab:

CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Manchester 939 bla bla bla

Mainboard:
ASUSTeK Computer INC
A8N32-SLI-Deluxe
Rev 1.xx

Memory:
Type-DDR
Size 2048 MBytes
 
N

N31L

Obliviot
Hey! I fixed it!

All I needed was a BIOS update. ASUS Update Utility has known issues according to the guys on the ASUS forums with my X-Fi sound card. Some sort of registry bug. But that still didn't fix it not being able to recognize 2.0gb of ram or the motherboard when I tried to install the utility.

So... I got that floppy drive in today and did an EZ-Flash on the board to the latest BIOS version 1303 and when I restarted I almost cried when I got a CMOS error but a quick look in the bios to see everything needed resetting fixed that and now I finally have 2gb of ram running at the proper high speed timings!

Thanks for all your help and time... It's greatly appreciated!!
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Glad to hear its fixed! Too bad about that ridiculous bug though... at least you worked around it :)
 
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