2GB of RAM Just Does Not Cut It With Windows 7

Our back shop desktop machine probably gets the most work out of all of the systems in our business with the exception of my own in the front office.

For the longest while we had left 2GB of RAM in that back shop system.

Prior to Windows 7’s service pack 1 the machine performed reasonably well . . . at least until there were a few windows open, IE tabs open, and maybe Word and/or Excel.

Lately, the machine was dragging more and more with the hard drive light remaining almost constant.

So, we finally had a bit of time to pull the box apart and upgrade the RAM.

The only things open on the box after adding 4GB of RAM for a total of 6GB is this Windows Live Writer window and an RDP session into another desktop.

Notice that the OS is sitting at 2GB of RAM used!

The numbers shown above would be a lot different on just 2GB of RAM. Watching in the Resource Monitor it was possible to see when IE tabs were being swapped in and out of the page file along with almost any other application that was open on the machine.

3GB of RAM would do for most folks, but 4GB or more is a consideration for power users or users that work with Adobe and other high end apps on a regular basis.

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.

Windows Live Writer

Device Manager Unknown Device? VEN_10DE and DEV_0AA3 – Check the PCI Database

After publishing our post on the Eee PC unknown chipset device (Asus Eee PC – Unknown Hardware - Coprocessor VEN_10DE&DEV_0AA3) that we needed to search for we received a couple of great pointers in a comment on that post.

• PCI Vendor and Device Lists (PCI Database)

The PCI Database makes it pretty straightforward for us to figure out what the device is and who made it.

1. Figure out the Vendor Code:
1. VEN_10DE = 0x10DE
1. 
2. Figure out the Device Code:
1. DEV_0AA3 = 0x0AA3
1. 
3. Highlight and search for the Chip Description and:
1. Bing Search Results for nForce 730i SMBus Controller (http://www.bing.com/search?q=nForce+730i+SMBus+Controller&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC)
2. Result number four:
1. 
3. Click through and:
1. 

Wow, that was _so_ much simpler than trying to sift our way through all of the chaff that came up in our original searching.

Note that nForce driver v15.51 looks to be the most current version available for this chipset.

Another pointer given was to the Driver Easy utility site. Essentially, they keep track of every driver providing a one stop shop for loading the most recent drivers on a freshly installed OS (non-OEM image).

A technician’s license is $0.99/Computer loaded. For a small IT shop that does not keep a lot of driver content readily available this would be a good way of saving time for those one-off OS loads as it would save a lot of time hunting around for the right drivers.

For larger shops there would need to be an evaluation against current practices to see if there was value in using the Driver Easy tool.

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.

Windows Live Writer

Intel DQ35JO On Board Graphics Problem – Really Poor Performance

One of our shop desktops has a Core 2 Duo E6850 running at 3 GHz installed on an Intel Desktop Board DQ35JO Executive Series.

The system had Windows 7 Enterprise x64 installed a while back with all of the latest driver and BIOS updates being applied along the way.

The system has two older BenQ FP931 19” 4x3 LCD monitors connected to the on board video ports.

This system has had a strange behaviour since Windows 7 64 bit has been installed on it. When dragging a window between the two monitors or even moving it from one point on the desktop to another on the same monitor the drag process would be ridiculously slow.

It was almost like the window was being pulled through the water in the way it moved across the screen or screens.

We have a few in-house projects on the go today so while our client systems were doing their thing we pulled the workbench system apart.

There are two 320GB Seagate 7200.10 drives set in a RAID 0 stripe that had no connection issues. The CPU and cooler looked to be as expected as did the optical drive.

When we got to the memory we found:

• Channel 1 slot 1: 1 GB KVR667D2N5/1G
• Channel 2 slot 1: 512 MB KVR533D2N5/512
• Channel 1 slot 2: 1 GB KVR667D2N5/1G
• Channel 2 slot 2: 512 MB KVR533D2N5/512

When checking in the BIOS we saw that the memory sticks were in the correct place as memory status showed “Dual Channel Mode”.

So, we had a look at Kingston’s memory support site for the DQ35JO.

• Kingston Intel DQ35JO Memory Configurations

Note the distinct lack of any part number beginning with KVR533. We must have had the two 533 MHz parts in the parts bin when we put this box together and tossed them in to get a full 3 GB of RAM in the box.

We dug around in the parts bin and came up with four KVR800D2N6/1G sticks of RAM. We installed them, checked in the BIOS to make sure that all four sticks were being seen and then booted up Windows 7.

Once into Windows 7 we saw the above as well. So, we knew that our now 4 GB of RAM was being seen by the operating system.

But what of the window dragging and overall graphics problem?

It was gone!

Windows would now drag between monitors or around on a monitor with no lag time or any “fluid” like motions.

Since the DQ35JO’s on board graphics uses system RAM we can see why there would be a performance hit of significant proportions when the RAM in the system was the wrong spec.

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.

Windows Live Writer

Intel CPU and Board Compatibility Tool

If there are ever any doubts on whether a particular CPU will work with a specific motherboard, the Intel Processors and Boards Compatibility Tool is the site to check with.

We are looking at updating the DX38BT based QX9650 Core 2 Extreme system here in the shop with an Intel Core I7-875K Processor.

And the results are:

Given that the I7-875K is unlocked so that we can change the bus and clock frequencies to tweak the CPU’s performance, it is our preference to look for an Extreme series board.

We end up with either the DP55SB or the KP55KG.

Now, we need to have two PCI-E x16 slots available for the dual ATI Sapphire 3870 x2 video cards (yeah, a little dated but they run 4 monitors really well).

Both boards have PCI-E 16x slots that share bandwidth with the primary PCI-E 8x slot if something gets plugged into them. Since we are not gaming, there is no real need for the extra bandwidth.

The catch for this situation though is that we also have a SoundBlaster X-Fi PCI series soundcard in this system. Thus, we need a legacy PCI slot to plug the sound card into. So, the DP55KG will fit the bill.

In the end, we will have replaced just the board and CPU and ended up with a good step up in overall system performance for a very reasonable cost.

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.

Windows Live Writer

Reuse Laptop Slim DVD-ROM Drives With a SATA Adapter

We have a stack of slim IDE DVD-ROM drives that came out of old laptops that have since been recycled. Up to now, they were reused if a laptop came in out of warranty with a dead optical drive.

But, we have since found an adapter that enables us to take the stock drive and connect an IDE to SATA adapter for reuse in some of our server builds.

DVD-RW or combo drives are not needed in servers in most cases. The optical drive may get used once or perhaps twice as a rule for the OS install and possibly a restore boot from the OS disk.

The adapter from StarTech’s Web site:

Shown in the above product shot is the IDE connector. The opposite side of the board has a standard SATA data connector along with a small Molex floppy style power connector.

StarTech’s Product site:

• StartTech: SATA to Slim Optical IDE Drive Adapter
• Part Number: OPT2SATA

The part is listed in our Canadian distribution channel and some distributers actually have stock on them.

Besides servers, we will have the occasional Mini-ITX based system (previous blog post) that will not require any read/write capabilities, so we will use them there and give the system price the appropriate price break as the slim optical drives are not inexpensive.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Windows Vista – No Network Connectivity (H/W)

We recently completed a hardware upgrade for one of the partners at a client.

The upgrade was pretty straight forward. New hardware included an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 and an Intel DP45SG Extreme series desktop board.

We put a fresh copy of Windows Vista Ultimate (FPP) on the box, installed the most recent hardware drivers, updated the OS and Office 2007 installs, and ran through a burn-in.

The system passed with flying colours.

Out the door it went. That was late last week.

After a successive number of phone calls from the partner saying that he could not, no matter what he tried, get the system to connect to the Internet we figured his 2-3 year old Linksys WRT45G router was toast.

His ISP had sent him a new 2Wire modem/router combo box, so we figured we would put in a new high performance N series wireless access point. We set both boxes up to work together (DHCP off on the N AP and a static IP on the 2Wire subnet), and tested everything successfully.

After taking the 2Wire and N AP home and setting it up, his laptop connected to the Internet effortlessly via the new N series AP.

But, the upgraded system still refused to pull an IP address from the 2Wire device!

So, we had him drop the system off here at the shop so we could have a look at it. We ran several tests that included plugging the system into our workbench network, our own internal network, and a couple different routers with DHCP enabled on them and all of the devices were successful in delivering an IP address to the box.

Scratch the head time

He came and picked up the box this morning and was going to put things back together and see if it worked. He stood here in the shop and watched me plug it into the different devices to get an IP successfully, so he knew it should work!

Well, at lunch time he called and said that the box was still not pulling an IP address.

It is now a pretty clear thing that there was something about his environment that was mucking things up.

So, out come the 50 questions:

• Where is the 2Wire and N series AP plugged into? The wall.
• Where was the system plugged in? A power bar.
• What else is plugged into that power bar? Another PC, two LCD monitors, a LaserJet printer, and a couple of other doodads.
• Is there a UPS? No.

On the off chance, we had him shut the system down, plug it into the wall, and plug either the 2Wire or wireless N access point into the power bar.

He called back about 15 minutes later absolutely ecstatic! The system pulled an IP address and was now connected to the Internet!

We had a good laugh over the situation, but it sure was frustrating getting to the bottom of it.

So, we are ordering up a couple of APC 1500VA voltage regulation based UPSs (BR1500LCD) to split off the two PCs and will make sure that the laser printer is plugged into the surge port and not a battery backup port.

It just goes to show you, there can be any number of physical reasons behind a system’s strange behaviour. One of those reasons is enough A/C power to bring core system components online, but not quite enough coming in from the A/C side to get everything running properly.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Vista and Blu-ray and the LG GGC-H20L Optical Drive needs updates

For the last Intel Channel Conference we paid for the afternoon desktop build session to work with Intel engineers on their new desktop technologies.

The system build was to be a Blu-ray and HD-DVD capable system. No OS was included in the session. We opted for Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1.

The configuration:

• Intel DG45FC Mini-ITX
• Intel Core 2 Duo Desktop Processor E8500
• 4GB Kingston 800MHz DDR2 RAM
• 320GB Seagate Momentus 7200.3
• LG Super Multi Blue GGC-H20L
• In-Win BM-639 Mini-ITX Case
• USB based wireless (don't have yet).

When it comes to the motherboard, we made sure to install and update all of the relevant drivers from the CD that came with it along with updates via Intel's Web site.

For the LG optical drive, we were not going to run with any of the software on the accompanying CD because the OEM version of software products tend to be missing some key component or other that we would subsequently be directed to the software manufacturer's Web site to purchase.

Since Windows Vista does not support Blu-ray out of the box, we needed to run with third party. We decided to check out the included OEM PowerDVD product which is version 7 after all. Of course, this is a special edition for the OEM packaged product while CyberLink's site shows version 8 as current.

One of the installation options on the LG CD was a utility to check for any firmware updates applicable to the LG optical drive. Given the newness of the technologies in the optical drive, checking for firmware updates was a good idea.

Sure enough, there was one to bring the new drive's firmware up to 1.03:

LG Optical Firmware

The download was somewhere around 6MB in size and a reboot was not requested once installed. Just in case, we rebooted the box.

The CyberLink PowerDVD product required an update to 7.3 that was about 103MB in size.

Once we had the two updates in place, we ran a Blu-ray of Kung-Fu Panda and it looked astounding on our 22" shop wide LCD. It will look even better when tied into a wide screen LCD television via HDMI which is built into this motherboard.

Note that PowerDVD version 8 does not support HD-DVD decoding: Does PowerDVD 8 support HD DVD playback? From the link:

After Toshiba made their announcement that it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD format discs and the fact that there will be limited new title releases in HD DVD format, CyberLink has decided to remove HD DVD support from PowerDVD 8. However, CyberLink will continue to support and maintain HD DVD movie playback in PowerDVD Ultra (version 7.3).

Now, after a bit of research as a result of the above, we came up with this gem from the We Got Served blog: How To: Play Blu-ray and HD DVD Movies from Vista Media Center.

The suggested products are a software player that integrates with MCE which PowerDVD also does not do:

• Blu-ray/DVD Archiving to Disk: SlySoft’s AnyDVD HD
• Blu-ray/HD-DVD Payer: ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre

We will be purchasing the above software to round out our new home theatre PC.

And, at some point in the near future we will put together a Windows Home Server to sit beside our home SBS 2003 R2 Premium server! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Canadian and Other Non-US Currency Quoting Cautions

With the economies of the world struggling and in some cases dropping in the tank, we have seen a roller coaster ride of ups and downs for our product pricing.

This is what our Canadian dollar looks like against the United States dollar today from XE:

The Canadian Dollar Today

Ouch. :(

Prices in the distribution channel have only started increasing in the last two to four weeks for us. In some cases, we received price increase warning letters from manufacturers that we are registered resellers for. In others, Synnex Canada has been pretty good about e-mailing us with price increase warnings.

Pricing volatility has played havoc on our quoting which we normally allow 30 days for. Lately, we have reduced that to one business week.

As a result, we end up needing to buffer the quote up 5-10% (divide not multiply) to cover any immediate increases.

If prices remain relatively static, then when the time comes to issue an invoice for the deposit on the project, we will let our client know that we can pass along a 5-10% savings to them due to our pricing levels.

The tough spot was about three weeks ago when we saw the Intel Xeon E5440 Quad Core CPUs jump by close to $300 cost per processor and the RAID controller jumping another $150 in cost. Other components in the server build also saw some significant steps upwards in price.

We were able to talk to our clients and prospective clients about a compromise on our existing quotes. They understood that the economic situation was making things difficult for us. We ended up absorbing 50% of the cost increase for that situation. Another ouch, but at least they were happy that we took the time to explain the situation and split the difference with them.

For those of you in the United States, this situation may not be impacting your business, but for those of us outside of the U.S., we are, in some cases, being hit quite hard with the currency fluctuations.

Be cautious in quoting folks. Given the situation in the world, now is not the time to start losing on projects due to missed margins.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

EVGA 790i Ultra MB and Kingston RAM

We put together a system for a client:

• Vista x64 RTM - Stop 0x0000007e on EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Mainboard
• Vista x64 RTM - Stop 0x0000000A on EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Mainboard + EVGA Support A++

The whole process was a learning experience for us since nVidia is not the first stop on the high performance bus for us (pun intended).

Well, when we sourced product for the motherboard, we were pretty careful to get all of the components recommended by each component manufacturer for compatibility.

One of the big losses when putting together a system like this over an Intel Xeon series server is the intensive validation that the components get on the server side.

So, guess what? At the time we built the workstation, Kingston was recommending KVR1333D3N8K2/2G for a system that would be configured with a total of 2 kits for 4GB.

Other than one of the Western Digital Raptors outright dying, the system has been hiccuping on a random basis. There did not seem to be any indication of a source for the problem though.

After the Raptor died, we made sure to flash the board's BIOS, any available firmware updates, and drivers for the motherboard, video cards, etc.

Yesterday, while on the bench, the system refused to misbehave. At least that is, until we walked in this morning and found it uttering a single long beep one after the other in slow repetition.

The motherboard's LCD troubleshooting block (it is embedded on the board for overclock troubleshooting) indicated a C1 which was memory initialization.

We ran through the BurnInTest Pro in memory torture mode with no results. Leaving the machine idle and go into screen saver last night seemed to be the key to bringing out the gremlins.

So, after running the memory test built into Windows Vista which turned up error free, we were in a quandary ... until verifying the RAM info at Kingston's site again:

EVGA nForce 790i SLI Motherboard RAM Compatibility List

Notice a difference between what we installed and what is listed today?

We are looking at an "N9" instead of an "N8".

Now, we are heading out to pick up the N9 RAM to see if that actually does make a difference.

Just to qualify: We have run into RAM compatibility issues like this before with listing changes over time on Kingston's site on both server and workstation configurations. So, this situation does not come as a surprise to us.

Now, does the RAM change fix the problem ... we will keep you posted! :)

And if it does ... anyone need four 1GB sticks of KVR1333D3N8K2/2G memory?

One more thing ...

Part No Longer Exists

Gotta love when that happens. :(

Buyer Beware ...

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Vista - Stop 0x0000004e - PFN List Corrupt

We were putting together a new Vista x64 box for some VMs to run on Virtual PC.

We went to install Vista Ultimate SP1 x64 and received a strange BSOD:

Stop 0x0000004e PFN_List_Corrupt

Now, this box has been used once or twice in the past couple of months. However, it was behaving quite strange. So, yesterday we put in a new set of drives for the RAID 1 array and went to reinstall the OS.

Thinking that the problem may have been with having too much RAM, even though SP1 is not supposed to have that problem, we pulled the two 2GB sticks leaving 2GB in the machine.

Sure enough, the OS installed.

After a shutdown and reinstall of the 2GB sticks we started seeing the system behave strangely to the point where it would not function at all.

We rebooted, hit the F8 key to get into the boot selection key, then it ESC to get to the Memory Diagnostic Tool.

This is what we were greeted with:

Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool

Yes, we have a hardware problem. At least it is now confirmed.

Once the system had rebooted as indicated it would when the test was finished we saw:

Bad Memory

Too bad the DQ35JO doesn't light up the slot the bad memory is in like the server systems do.

After a little bit of troubleshooting, we had the culprit and put in to Kingston for an RMA.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Vista x64 RTM - Stop 0x0000007e on EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Mainboard

A relatively new client of ours wanted us to figure out why their system was not able to "SLI" on a pair of EVGA 8800GTX Ultra video cards in the system. They had recently picked up a game that they wanted to run on a larger high resolution monitor. There was also a need to tune up the system after about a year of usage.

The system configuration as it came to us:

• Intel QX6850 Quad Core Extreme
• Asus Maximus Formula X38 motherboard
• 4GB Crucial BallistiX DDR2
• EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra PCI-E Video (pair)
• 74GB Raptor (OS), 400GB Seagate (storage), and 500GB Seagate (storage)
• 1KW PSU
• Antec Nine Hundred Case
• Windows Vista Ultimate x86

Anyone catch the reason the nVidia SLI function was not available?

In this particular case, our client had gone to one of the local computer stores in the city to get the components needed to setup a new system.

At that time, about a year ago, DDR3 memory was hard come by and extremely expensive. So, it looks as though the sales clerk had move our client into the Asus Maximus Formula for its DDR2 capability.

The sales clerk missed something very important in the process: The Asus Maximus Formula was an ATI CrossFire enabled board! With the ATI setup, the video card bridge comes with the video cards. With the nVidia setup, the bridge comes with the motherboard. ATI CrossFire and nVidia SLI motherboards are not cross compatible. That is, one cannot plug in a pair of SLI video cards into a CrossFire based motherboard and expect to get nVidia SLI to function.

Since the video cards were also made by EVGA, and we had access to the EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Mainboard, that was the direction that we recommended and our client accepted.

Once we had the EVGA motherboard and a set of 4GB DDR3 1,333MHz Kingston memory, everything went together relatively well.

One caveat we ran into was the length of the video cards versus the hard drive cage setup in the Antec 900. We needed to move the cages a step out to enable the video cards and the Raptors to work together in relatively the same space.

EVGA 8800GTX Ultra snugged up to the 150GB WD Raptor

We were fortunate in that the SATA data cable on the back of the Raptor was able to fit just so in behind the EVGA's plastic housing.

When installing Windows Vista Ultimate x64 RTM on the system, we had the full 4GB of RAM installed on the motherboard.

During the initial spool up of the Windows Vista setup routine we received a BSOD with a 0x0000007E indicator and that was it.

It has been our experience on the Intel side of things that Windows setup will fail with more than 2GB of RAM installed on the motherboard. It looks like the nForce chipset suffers the same problem.

Once we removed two of the 1GB RAM sticks to bring things down to 2GB on the motherboard, setup proceeded as expected.

The system was fast! Vista Ultimate x64 installed in no time flat.

One thing to keep in mind when setting the system up is to not plug in a network cable into either of the NIC ports. Make sure to install the EVGA nForce 790i board drivers first, then the nVidia video card drivers and the requisite reboots.

The EVGA motherboard had production BIOS P01 installed out of the box. No matter what we tried we could not get the second video card recognized without a Vista BSOD.

So, we needed to update the EVGA nForce 790i Series BIOS (EVGA support forum) to the most recent version which was P05p released the day before yesterday. P05 would not allow the second video card to be recognized either.

For the SLI or dual card setup to work properly for us:

1. Single card to start.
2. Update the BIOS (record those settings and restore to defaults before updating)
• Note that any RAID configuration would not be lost when the RAID controller was disabled.
• Make sure to enable the RAID controller and set the appropriate drives after the update.
3. Reboot
4. Make the requisite BIOS settings changes.
5. Power down.
6. Install the second SLI video card and the SLI bridge.
7. Boot into the OS.
8. The nVidia drivers will probably need to be reinstalled.
• The BIOS update and second video card wiped out our nVidia driver setup.
9. Reboot and engage SLI if required.
• The driver will pop up the management screen after the reboot.

Once we finished getting the SLI function going, the system was pretty much good to go.

There was one more snag, but that one will go into a separate post.

There certainly is an art to overclocking systems. Looking through the forums with all of the discussions around system hardware configurations and BIOS settings for all of the different variables was mind boggling!

Here was the existing components with the components we added:

• Intel QX6850 Quad Core Extreme (existing)
• EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard
• 4GB Kingston KVR1333D3N8/1G (PDF spec sheet)
• EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra PCI-E Video (pair) (existing)
• 300GB Western Digital Raptor 10K RPM in RAID 0+1 (4 150GB Raptor drives)
• Zalman CNPS9700NT CPU cooler
• Antec Nine Hundred Case (existing)
• 1200 Watt Thermaltake Toughpower 4 Rail PSU

Here is how the system spec'd out on the Windows Vista Experience Index:

5.9 across the board! Time to update that assessment. ;)

Neat :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.