Boot issues caused by memory?

Recently I swapped an 8GB memory upgrade that I performed on my Aspire 5552 last year into my new Aspire V3-571 NXRYFEK016

More recently, I noticed that my laptop had problems booting...it would freeze on the acer logo at boot. I tried disabling fast boot, and also upgraded the bios/EFI Firmware using the downloads from the acer uk site. At the suggestion of a friend, it was advised that the memory might not be compatible.

The memory that is recommended for this laptop on crucials uk site is:

DDR3 PC3-12800

The memory that I swapped in from the 5552 is:

DDR3 PC3-10600

I've now swapped the memory back, and re-enabled fast boot, and it appears to boot first time, every time now.

Can anyone from Acer confirm definitively that this was likely the problem?

Accepted answers

csc2ya

I do now have this resolved. I found out the other day it was either something plugged into my usb hub, or the hub itself. I've now got another hub plugged in that sits beside the laptop, and have only my external HDD, cooling pad, and mouse plugged in, and it now boots first time every time with no delay.

All comments

HolyDriver

That does sound like it's the issue. Whether it's caused by incompatible or just bad RAM remains to be seen. However, Crucial does in-house testing to make sure that RAM is compatible, so if they say it's compatible, it most likely is.

What I would try is downloading Memtest86+ and making a bootable USB drive, reinstall the new RAM, then see if you can get it to boot up and run the test. If it has errors, then that RAM is bad - exchange it for some new RAM and see if that resolves the issue.

If that doesn't resolve the issue, then you may need to go back to your old RAM and update your system with the latest BIOS and try again.

csc2ya

The memory that I swapped in wasn't actually recommended for the V3-571...It was for the Aspire 5552.

The reason I put it in the V3 is that I prefer crucial's memory...more for reliability than anything else.

The uk crucial site does not list the memory I put in as being compatible with the V3, so I thought it may be that it wasn't compatible. However, given that the laptop is still having occasional problems booting even with the memory that came with it, i'm beginning to think that it isn't a memory issue, although I now have no idea what is causing the issue.

HolyDriver

You could always try reinstalling the original RAM, entering the BIOS, and telling it to restore defaults/use fail-safe settings/however they word it. Changing the RAM around may have messing with timing values somehow, so telling them to reset could help.

If you're having booting issues even with the original RAM after that, I would recommend running Memtest86+ even on the original RAM. Try it one module at a time and let it run for about 8-10 passes to get a solid conclusion. There's a slight possibility that the RAM got damaged when being swapped around if it got any sort of small static shock.

Aside from that, depending on where it's hanging up in the boot process, you may want to try running checkdisk to see if there are any issues with the Windows system files. You may want to use Data Lifeguard to check if your hard drive has any issues itself (the download is for some random Western Digital drive, but it doesn't matter - it will be able to run checks on any drive).

About the only final thing I can think of is to check the RAM in another system that is not having any issues to rule out the RAM being the cause of the problem, then reinstall it into your laptop and try Prime95 to check for CPU faults.

csc2ya

I believe I now know that this does not appear to be a hardware issue. I noticed yesterday morning when turning it on that it froze again and would not respond to ctrl+alt+del to force a reboot.

I noticed that after a few minutes, the screen went blank as if it had rebooted, then it came up with the acer logo again, followed a few seconds later by the spinning dots, then it loaded into the win8 logon screen...so it looks like patience is the key here.

Would still love to get it to boot first time every time, but as I don't know what's causing it (and I don't really want to have to send it in for repairs (although getting half my money back would be nice)), I guess i'll just put up with it.

csc2ya

I do now have this resolved. I found out the other day it was either something plugged into my usb hub, or the hub itself. I've now got another hub plugged in that sits beside the laptop, and have only my external HDD, cooling pad, and mouse plugged in, and it now boots first time every time with no delay.