KVR Audio

daviencrow · Post by **daviencrow** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 9:05 pm

You guys made a good point there, Let me try that. They won't send me more RAM unless I can proove it went bad, hopefully it didnt, and hopefully I won't have to re-install windows either.

I'll get back to you guys later and let you know the results.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 10:04 pm

C00kie wrote:AHA!! That's it, you have too much RAM!

No, he doesn't.

Risking I'm talking a bit bollux now, but hang on: in the old DOS days, there were some gaps in the RAM memory map that were taken by ROM or the video card or whatever, and those pages were relocated. So instead of 1 MB you had 1.064 because there was 64K salvaged.

There was a 15-16 meg hole that you could turn on or off from the BIOS is what you're remebering. There is also the upper 384k in the first meg too that BIOS from other cards (video, network, etc.) get mapped too as well.

2GB is the upper limit you can address in 32bits.

2 GB is the upper limits of 31 bits, not 32 bits. 4 gigs is the upper limit of 32 bits.

Is this why there is a "3GB" switch somewhere in boot.ini for XP??

The 3 gig switch is there for programs that want to do 3 gigs of application space and 1 gig of OS space. Most apps take 2 gigs of app, 2 gigs of system. So yes, your porgrams have a 2 gig limit unless you turn on the 3 gig switch as WELL has the flag set when the program is compiled into an .exe to take 3 gigs of ram. Tracktion is turned on for this, most apps aren't.

Devon

daviencrow · Post by **daviencrow** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 11:42 pm

WELL Regardless of all of that, what you guys were talking about with the Swap file I pretty much remembered only works with older systems ... like Windows 98 most of the time ... and either way resetting the Swap File and making a new one and all that jazz didn't do anything at all.

daviencrow · Post by **daviencrow** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 11:44 pm

You guys think it would hurt to be the 533mhz (i think is the speed) from my Dell since its the same exact ram type just 1 step up in speed in the alienware to test it ? I would think that it would only run the faster RAM at the speed it supports... But then again it could fry everything and that would just blow .... What do you guys think ?

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 12:15 am

daviencrow wrote:WELL Regardless of all of that, what you guys were talking about with the Swap file I pretty much remembered only works with older systems ... like Windows 98 most of the time ... and either way resetting the Swap File and making a new one and all that jazz didn't do anything at all.

Nope, still works, even with servers. It can get corrupted. Sometimes you just need to reset it. But you did try it, and that's what happened? Have you tried running with only 1 gig of memory? Some apps really don't like more than 1 gig.

Devon

daviencrow · Post by **daviencrow** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 7:11 pm

DevonB wrote:
daviencrow wrote:WELL Regardless of all of that, what you guys were talking about with the Swap file I pretty much remembered only works with older systems ... like Windows 98 most of the time ... and either way resetting the Swap File and making a new one and all that jazz didn't do anything at all.
Nope, still works, even with servers. It can get corrupted. Sometimes you just need to reset it. But you did try it, and that's what happened? Have you tried running with only 1 gig of memory? Some apps really don't like more than 1 gig.

Devon

Honestly the paging file doesnt make as much of a difference since 98 .. the way memory is handled is entirely different since then... BUT I mean it could of been the problem simply because its being used still of course ....

Yes I have tried 1 RAM stick errors with either (if you didn't notice the previous posts) ... But 2GB of RAM is not the problem, especially not when things have been running fine, nothing has been significantly changed, for months .. then this randomly starts to happen.

32bit Windows is perfectly capable of handling 2GB always... hell even a little over 3GB if you have the right settings and the programs can call on it (just depends on several factors)

daviencrow · Post by **daviencrow** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 7:11 pm

daviencrow wrote:You guys think it would hurt to be the 533mhz (i think is the speed) from my Dell since its the same exact ram type just 1 step up in speed in the alienware to test it ? I would think that it would only run the faster RAM at the speed it supports... But then again it could fry everything and that would just blow .... What do you guys think ?

anyone have an anwer for that ? Or do you think its too risky. Not all RAM is created equal, DDR2 might not be as forgiving when doing this as older types lol..

daviencrow · Post by **daviencrow** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 7:13 pm

Well Guys here's what I think I'm going to do, I'm going to tell the company the RAM is bad and simply lie and say Microsofts Crappy Memory Test said the RAM was bad.. So they send me new RAM ... in the meantime I'm going to use Norton Ghost and Backup everything I need ... or do it manually to some external drives ... go buy another large drive i can ebay when I'm done with it ... and reinstall everything.

It will take me literally close to 3 days (like last time) to do all of this. But it will at least give my system a fresh start lol.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 8:02 pm

daviencrow wrote:Honestly the paging file doesnt make as much of a difference since 98 .. the way memory is handled is entirely different since then... BUT I mean it could of been the problem simply because its being used still of course ....

Sure it's changed since the 'old days', but the page file is still used, and quite heavily on file servers, for example. I have watched several thousand pages a second on our heaviest hit file clusters at work.

Yes I have tried 1 RAM stick errors with either (if you didn't notice the previous posts) ... But 2GB of RAM is not the problem, especially not when things have been running fine, nothing has been significantly changed, for months .. then this randomly starts to happen.

Ok, good start at least. Still, could be many things. Always try the obvious things first, like memory, page file, re-install, etc. It could always be motherboard, bad power supply not supplying enough power (what does your BIOS say your voltage that's being delivered to your 3/5/12 volt lines, if it does show that?), etc.

32bit Windows is perfectly capable of handling 2GB always... hell even a little over 3GB if you have the right settings and the programs can call on it (just depends on several factors)

The OS can, yes. Not ALL apps can though. If I do so remember correctly, Logic Audio 5 had problems with over 1 gig of ram, old GigaStudio 2 had problems with over 1 gig, etc. Most programs cannot utilize more than 2 gigs unless the .exe is compiled to take advantage of 3 gigs. I believe someone on here hacked Sonar .exe to set the 3 gig flag to take advantage of his 3 gigs of ram back a few months ago.

Devon

daviencrow · Post by **daviencrow** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:19 am

Sure it's changed since the 'old days', but the page file is still used, and quite heavily on file servers, for example. I have watched several thousand pages a second on our heaviest hit file clusters at work.

I was really just refering to the typical DAW, Game System, or Non-Networked Office Computer. I know severs and other machines with applications for CGI etc.. use the paging file extensively.

Either way in my case removing the paging files on my drives and then re-seating those did not do the trick. I didn't really think it was the problem anyways considering Diskeeper kept wanting to raise the paging file to unreasonable sizes (hinting the RAM wasn't being utilized)

Ok, good start at least. Still, could be many things. Always try the obvious things first, like memory, page file, re-install, etc. It could always be motherboard, bad power supply not supplying enough power (what does your BIOS say your voltage that's being delivered to your 3/5/12 volt lines, if it does show that?), etc.

I tried everything. I took me lying to tech support because they wont trust memtest86 and I had to be carefull not to tell them I did anything that would of voided my warranty ... But I got them to send me new RAM by telling them I tried RAM from my Dell that they haven't tested on the moterboard I have yet (the 533mhz speed) and that it eliminated the errors ... It worked of course because tech support people usually are remedial at best when it comes to their personal computer knowledge.

In the meantime I took the oppourtunity to backup, reformat, and clean install Windows, my apps, plugins, and get the computer a little less cluttered... Also utilized my drives a little better since I had the space I installed things like BFD XFL and other intense plugins like that to their own drive as they suggest.

However the problem didn't stop, as I expected and argued with tech support over for literally 3 hours ...

Once the new RAM got here and I popped it in the problems ceased. However I am very concerned at how hot my RAM seems to be getting. I am going to have to tweak the fan speeds I think and see if my board will support my RAM being placed in slots far apart from one another (since they have heatsinks on them) .. I know some systems cant.

The OS can, yes. Not ALL apps can though. If I do so remember correctly, Logic Audio 5 had problems with over 1 gig of ram, old GigaStudio 2 had problems with over 1 gig, etc. Most programs cannot utilize more than 2 gigs unless the .exe is compiled to take advantage of 3 gigs. I believe someone on here hacked Sonar .exe to set the 3 gig flag to take advantage of his 3 gigs of ram back a few months ago.

Devon

I understand that, but most applications don't need more than 1GB of RAM to run optimal... Some could benefit from it (like our sequencers).. I would be pretty simple for a programmer/hacker to change dlls and executables required to get a program to TRY and use 3GB or more ... wether or not it actually works is a different story in some cases

Speaking of which I'm fairly sure that you could pump 4GB out of Sonar 5 since it supports the 64-bit OS ... There might be a way to fool programs with support for that to use more RAM ...

at least Sonar 4 and 5 already support multi-processing and multi-core processors....

either way 2GB of RAM is usually enough for any project at the current point in time... The highest ive seen my RAM monitor get up to when using sonar was around 35% and the highest for my CPU was 17% ... if its not enough Freeze works good ^_^

daviencrow · Post by **daviencrow** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:20 am

Ah where are my manners ... Thanks for your help everyone ! Turned out to be the RAM all along (as most of us thought)

Memory cannot be read errors !! PLEASE HELP