Hi, I'm running Fedora 9 on a Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz with 2x1GB memory, and I'm getting some odd things. The system boots fine and runs for a while. Then at some point (which may well be associated with backing up to my USB hard drive) the system locks up hard. If I immediately reboot with Memtest86+ then it shows a cluster of memory errors.
When I first saw this I tried testing each stick individually, but could not produce any errors. So I put them both back in and ran Memtest for a few hours, with no problems. So I rebooted Linux. Everything seemed fine, so I started my (now long overdue) backup. It hung after a few gigabytes, and rebooting with Memtest86+ showed the memory errors were back.
I think the problem is temporarily cleared by a power cycle. When I tried playing with the RAM timings in the BIOS I noticed that the power cycled automatically when I exited the BIOS screen. This leads me to suspect that something is inadvertently tweaking the RAM parameters in the BIOS. One possibility is a kernel bug in the Linux USB driver.
I'm using Corsair RAM. On it is printed 1066MHz 5-5-5-15, 2.2v. This matches the BIOS settings except for the voltage, which the BIOS is setting automatically at 1.8v. There are big red warnings about over-voltage, so I'm nervous. When Memtest was giving errors I pushed it up to 1.9v, but that seemed to make the problem worse rather than better.
So: some questions:
1: Has anyone seen anything like this before?
2: Should I ignore the warnings and set the RAM voltage to 2.2? If I do so and it is wrong, could this damage anything other than the RAM?
3: Is it possible for an OS kernel to modify the RAM parameters "on the fly"? If so then I'll pursue this option.
When I first saw this I tried testing each stick individually, but could not produce any errors. So I put them both back in and ran Memtest for a few hours, with no problems. So I rebooted Linux. Everything seemed fine, so I started my (now long overdue) backup. It hung after a few gigabytes, and rebooting with Memtest86+ showed the memory errors were back.
I think the problem is temporarily cleared by a power cycle. When I tried playing with the RAM timings in the BIOS I noticed that the power cycled automatically when I exited the BIOS screen. This leads me to suspect that something is inadvertently tweaking the RAM parameters in the BIOS. One possibility is a kernel bug in the Linux USB driver.
I'm using Corsair RAM. On it is printed 1066MHz 5-5-5-15, 2.2v. This matches the BIOS settings except for the voltage, which the BIOS is setting automatically at 1.8v. There are big red warnings about over-voltage, so I'm nervous. When Memtest was giving errors I pushed it up to 1.9v, but that seemed to make the problem worse rather than better.
So: some questions:
1: Has anyone seen anything like this before?
2: Should I ignore the warnings and set the RAM voltage to 2.2? If I do so and it is wrong, could this damage anything other than the RAM?
3: Is it possible for an OS kernel to modify the RAM parameters "on the fly"? If so then I'll pursue this option.
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