Two weeks ago I got a new computer with the following specs:
550W Antec TruePower TP-550 Modular Cables Management Power Supply
Lian Li PC-V351 Home Theatre HTPC Black Micro ATX Case NO PSU
Palit PCIE GT240 512MB 128-bit DDR3, DVI, HDMI
1TB 1000GB Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ SATA II 3.0Gb/s 7200RPM 32MB Cache
Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 LGA1156, 4xDDR3, 2xPCIE, Int.VGA, DVI, HDMI, mATX
8GB DDR3 Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 1333MHz PC-10600 CL-9-9-24 (2x4GB)
Intel Core i5 760 2.8HGz 8MB Cache LGA1156 CPU
I have installed Windows Server 2008 R2 on it, with the intention of using it as a fileserver, web development rig, and a host for numerous VMs.
Installing Windows Server was extremely painful. I don't have a CD-rom drive, and thus I had to install from a USB key. Every time the install would get to the point of expanding files, the system would restart... Not a good sign, but I thought that it might be an issue with the USB key (wishful thinking). I finally somehow managed to get Windows installed, and things seemed to be running fine.
I installed an AD on the base OS, and then realised that this wasn't a great idea, as I then planned on running VMs on the machine (I have read in a lot of places that you should not have AD running on the same machine which is acting as a virtual host).
I figured I might as well reinstall the OS. This time when I did, the problem of rebooting during the install occurred again, and the system simply refused to finish booting, instead freezing at the point of the discovery of the hard drives.
Anyway, I did a CMOS reset, and finally was able to attempt to reinstall windows. Several excruciating hours later, I finally got it installed (by fluke it seems - I did nothing to fix the problem of reboots during the install).
Everything seemed to be running alright until I installed Hyper-V. Then the random crashes started. Now, the biggest problem with these crashes, is that they occur completely randomly, and indeed they provide no useful information in the logs. The only error for all of the restarts, is logged as the following:
[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
[ Guid] {331C3B3A-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4}
EventID 41
Version 2
Level 1
Task 63
Opcode 0
Keywords 0x8000000000000002
– TimeCreated
[ SystemTime] 2010-09-21T14:07:25.939614900Z
EventRecordID 3577
Correlation
– Execution
[ ProcessID] 4
[ ThreadID] 8
Channel System
Computer <computer name>
– Security
[ UserID] S-1-5-18
- EventData
BugcheckCode 0
BugcheckParameter1 0x0
BugcheckParameter2 0x0
BugcheckParameter3 0x0
BugcheckParameter4 0x0
SleepInProgress false
PowerButtonTimestamp 0
Now, I am splitting hairs over this issue. However, I'm not willing to name Hyper-V as the culprit, as the computer will literally restart even when Hyper-V is doing absolutely nothing (with no VM's installed). I downloaded and ran a hotfix that Microsoft released which related to Hyper-V and i5 processors, and disabled AHCI on the suggestion by someone from another forum that this might be the cause of the issue.
Rather than accepting the fact that Hyper-V might indeed be the issue (and please let me know if there are known problems with the H55M board and Hyper-V!!), I decided to also do some hardware tests. I ran Memtest which then returned several hundreds of errors. Now the only issue that I have before racing out and returning the RAM to the store that I bought it from is the fact that the ram timings being reported by memtest, and in the BIOS, are quite simply wrong.
If you revisit my specs, you will see that the latency of the RAM that I purchased is not 7-7-7-20 as is being reported. Yet, I cannot see a way to change the timings in the BIOS, and indeed my motherboard manual says that the RAM timings are always automatically detected by the BIOS. Reseting the CMOS does not help in changing the latency settings.
Could this be what is causing the issues? Furthermore, would incorrect timings be causing memtest to report errors, or have I completely misunderstood how memtest works?
So I guess in short, I am hoping that someone might be able to let me know about any known issues with the H55M motherboard and Hyper-V, or alternatively why the heck my memory latencies are incorrect.
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
