We have a new Mini-ITX Intel Desktop Board DQ45EK based desktop that needs to go out to a client site this week.
For some odd reason the Windows 7 Enterprise x64 OS will not load properly while the two 2GB Kingston RAM sticks are installed for a total of 4GB.
So, we changed out the RAM one at a time and then both sticks. Sill no joy. The system seemingly ran slower than a 386 running Windows 95!
We changed out the desktop board and still had the same behaviour. Today, we picked up some Crucial RAM to replace the Kingston RAM to see if perhaps that there was a new unknown problem with the Kingston products. Again, no joy.
Now, we have _a lot_ of systems out there with this configuration, so this is very puzzling indeed.
The only other possibility that could be causing the problem is the BIOS update we did to production 111.
So, we went to back the BIOS off to production 109 and the update choked.
To recover a desktop BIOS, we needed to follow the instructions on Intel’s Web site:
- Intel Support: Desktop Boards: Instructions for Recovery BIOS update.
We used the production 109 BIOS version as the basis for recovery.
- Unplug the system.
- Pull the recovery jumper off by the CPU.
- Note the original position of the jumper.
- Copy the needed CB0xxx.BIO onto a USB flash drive.
- The file needs to be in the root of the drive.
- Plug the system in and power it up.
- BIOS recovery will run.
- Once complete, power down and pull the plug.
- Replace the jumper onto pins 1-2.
- Plug in and power up the system.
- Make sure to verify the BIOS settings for things like RAID or AHCI and others before booting the system.
Once the recovery finished, we jumped into the BIOS to set up the needed settings and Windows 7 booted as expected.
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.
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