Something I've never encountered before! plz help

[AC73]

Hello everyone, I've been hitting this site for many years, mostly the home page and the Cases & Case Modding forum just to see the awesome builds and get inspiration.
Knock on wood, I've never had any serious problems (none that I couldn't fix myself) with hardware under XP or Win2k. Hence why I've never posted here.

Enter Windows 7 64bit. I am using the same hardware as I did with XP Pro.

Now the problem, often after a restart or cold start, after hearing the system post the bios screen will show this:

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=ih8v2v&s=4

I've never seen this happen and I thought my bios was gone! hehe

When this happens the machine is frozen, the keyboard is completly unresponsive and I have to turn the machine off with the switch on the power supply. Starting the machine again will reveal this screen:

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=122yamp&s=4

hit F1 and Windows starts like nothing ever happened. hit DEL and nothing has changed in the bios anyway.

I also must tell you that when these pics were taken I had installed an extra 4 gig of G.Skill RAM I had sitting around (slightly different speed but the timings were the same at 5 5 5 15), just to see how much more performance I would get by doubling the amount of memory in the system. Turns out I didn't really see a difference. I also figured the the two different brands of RAM were causing the problem. The machine also started the ubiquitous restart when hitting shutdown thing. So I removed the G.Skill memory and the restart thing went away but this bios screen did not!
I am a little concerned about this problem, sometimes when something happens 3 times out of 10 it turns into 9 times out of 10. You know what I mean, the more you let something happen the worse it gets.

I am at a complete loss on how to fix this problem and any input would be much appriciated. If any other info is needed please let me know.

Oh yeah and the G.Skill RAM was F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ PC2-8000


Current system specs are as follows:

System Manufacturer/Model Number: Self Built

OS: Windows 7 Professional - Retail

CPU: Intel Q9450

Motherboard: Asus Striker II Foumula, w/bios: 2201

Memory: 4GB Corsair Dominator XMS2 PC8500C5DF DDR2 1066

Graphics Card(s): x2 nVidia 8800GTS XFX Alpha Dog (SLI)

Sound Card: Creative Audigy 2 (OEM)

Monitor(s) Displays: Samsung SyncMaster 1100DF 21"

Screen Resolution: 1600x1200

Hard Drives:
300GB Velociraptor - System
150GB Raptor - Games
x3 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1's

Optical Drive(s): Samsung SH-203B - SATA

PSU: PC Power & Cooling 860 Watt EPS 64 AMP

Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos S

Cooling: CPU - Titan Fenrir, GPUs - Stock, Memory - Dominator Airflow Fan

Keyboard: MS MultiMedia KB

Mouse: Razor Imperator

Other Info: Silicon Image SiI 3132 SATALink Controller (Vantec)
for 2 eSATA drives

Sorry its so long but details are details.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I hope to hear something from you all soon.
Also, if any more information on my part is needed please let me know.

Andrew.

 

[jackofalltrades]

Silly question but have you cleared the bios? That simple thing has helped me more than once.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

hmm weird.. have you tried defaulting your bios to see if that clears up the problem?

the ram being different models shouldnt cause a problem.. im using the same corsair ram you have with 2 generic kingston sticks for 3 gigs of ram..

 

[AC73]

Silly question but have you cleared the bios? That simple thing has helped me more than once.

Actually no. I never thought to do that. Duh. I will do it now and report back after a couple of restarts.

 

[AC73]

Well sirmonkey1985 your question was not silly at all, I was. The stupid button is on the back of the motherboard, as I'm sure you know, but I totally forgot about it and didn't think to use it. Boy do I feel stoopid.
Problem solved. I restarted many times and shutdown like 5 or 6 times without an issue.
Thanks a lot for your input sirmonkey. Lesson learned.

I'm thinking of an upgrade tho. I'm looking at the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R with an i7 930 and 6 or 8GB of RAM which I don't know what brand yet. I gotta check the QVL from Gigabyte still, and I'm going to look over the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R thread posted here. It seems to be a very active thread so there will be a lot to find out about this board.

Any one have any suggestions?

The budget will be $300 for the mobo and I guess $300 for the RAM seeing as I'd like to have at least 6GB.
My last 3 motherboards were Asus and I have had very little problems with them, save the Striker II Formula, it doesn't overclock very well. Right now everything is at factory settings because its just too hot in the summer here. Also some of the nicer Asus boards are a bit too pricey right now, although I've only looked into it halfheartedly.

I don't necessarily have to get an Asus. I would like to know what people are saying about other motherboards. I only know what I read in CustomPC, MaximumPC and a couple of review sites I have RSS feeds on.

The urge has been ever-increasing to upgrade since the i7's came out. I know it has been a while now but I didn't need to upgrade then, soon I think its time for some new and faster kit. Also true quad core and memory controller on the CPU die sounds good with triple channel RAM.
Video card(s) I will upgrade when Crysis2 hits.

 

[AC73]

Oh, and thanks to you all who have replied. I didn't notice until I posted my last reply.

hmm weird.. have you tried defaulting your bios to see if that clears up the problem?

the ram being different models shouldnt cause a problem.. im using the same corsair ram you have with 2 generic kingston sticks for 3 gigs of ram..

hmm I wonder if I should try it again? Also, what setting could there be for using 2 different kinds of RAM? Should the bios figure that out itself? The only thing I saw that changed was it disabled the SLI ready memory setting for the RAM. It just knocks the speed down to 800mhz from 1066.