I've had quite a day with my less than a year old PC! I have a GA-P35C-DS3R board with a Q6600 and 2GB of Crucial Ballistic RAM. For the past few months I've noticed the system would sometimes simply not boot. Every fan would power up, but there would be no POST beeps, and no onscreen image.

The first time this happened, I took the system completely apart and reseated everything. That seemed to solve the problem. The second time, I took out the CPU and replaced the heatsink compound and it seemed to fix the issue. Today, I was having the same problem so I again took the system apart and reseated everything. No go.

So figuring I'd end up sending the board back to Gigabyte, I spent nearly 3 hours getting my old PC back in running order.

About ready to pass out, I decided to try again with the new system, thinking maybe there was a short somewhere that I had overlooked. I finally figured out that when I have both of my RAM sticks installed, the board will not boot. With only one, it works fine. Doesn't matter which one either, so I'm pretty sure it isn't a bad RAM chip.

I'm not sure what to do from this point on. I'll call Gigabyte tomorrow and see if they have any suggestions, but it sucks that I cannot use the 2GB of memory that I paid for!

If anybody has any suggestions, or has heard of similar problems please let me know!

I'd guess that it actually is your memory. Ram can (and does) go bad from time to time. I deal with it at work on a fairly regular basis.

Run memtest on each stick, it might be bad ram.

Just thinking out side of the box but it mite be a grounding issue try putting elect tape over the stand offs then screw in the mobo.

what PSU are you using mite be going bad as well.

It's not a grounding issue.

I have had problems with the GA-P35-DQ6 mobos and the Crucial Ballistix 2GB DDR2 800. It can be a real pain in the butt, not even booting with one stick.

What I did was boot with no sticks and let the mobo beep about no RAM for a few cycles and then put in one stick and boot. Then go into BIOS and set the RAM to 2.2V and install the other stick.

I know your problem is a little different and it's a slightly different mobo. I built three almost identical systems. None gave me any trouble at first, and then one was a problem within 30 days. I got that one straightened out and just recently had a problem with mine.

I was updating to the latest BIOS, no I didn't need to, just a wild hair. Anyway the problem arose after I defaulted the BIOS before the update. I know that you don't need to default the BIOS before the update, only after, but I'm a little wary of all mobos. It seems all brands are a little flaky in one respect or another.

I was also doing some changes to the BIOS a day later to do some tests and I set the voltage to auto and it lost it again with the same steps to clear it. That was with the latest BIOS.

I don't know if you have the same RAM but they are a little flaky as well. I have had 2 bad sticks out of 6.
It probably isn't bad RAM, but you should also run memtest86+ and test them anyway.

Anyway, give the above steps a try and see if you can get the second stick working. you could also try slots 2 and 4.

I don't know that sending it back is going to help much.

And also... pls state ur ram speed, and if its overclocked, or if u have changed the timings.. Sometimes too tight timings or an overclocked RAM might be affecting it.. And thats why its probably able to manage to boot on ANY one stick..

I was overclocking my system and messing with memory timings at one point, but switched everything back to default when the system was rebooting while gaming.

Here is the info on my RAM:

# 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
# Capacity : 2GB (2 x 1GB)
# Speed : DDR2 800 (PC26400)
# Cas Latency : 4
# Timing : 4-4-4-12
# Voltage : 2.2V
# Heat Spreader : Included
# Manufacturer's Warranty : Lifetime


What makes me think this is a mobo issue is that I was trying to boot with no RAM at one point, as well as no CPU and was getting no POST beeps. I can't think of a single board that would sit idle with no CPU and not cry out in protest!

But I will update the BIOS, as well as run some RAM tests and see how that goes! Thanks for the replies!