OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
This unfortunately has a bit of a preamble:
My ThinkPad T420S began acting funny the other day; one of the Windows 10 updates failed and then it had trouble booting, was freezing on boot...etc. I figured the old Seagate 320GB drive was catching the dead so I ordered a Kingston V300 480GB SSD for it and installed it yesterday. After having some exciting fun with installation media and my DVD-RW drive I eventually used an external USB drive and got Windows 7 reinstalled. All went well until I copied my old data back, which involved a lot of I/O and after moving over a large chunk of data, it froze on the following reboot. Powered it off, back on, it came back up and worked fine. Next restart, same deal, same process, but taking two shots this time, and it came back up. And the boot was taking a lot longer at the windows logo.
Anyway, this carried on and eventually it froze at the login screen looping the audio. Since the boot problem was consistent across two drives I doubted it was the SSD. And since the system was fine once it was booted, this also reinforced that. I did manage to get one BSOD about a bad driver, but that only happened once. Updating various drivers did nothing, had the latest RST installed..etc. So, I'm thinking the controller on the board is taking a dive and I have some work I'm on the road for starting tomorrow. Great timing
Only spare rig I have kicking around is a mid-2010 Macbook Pro 15" with an i5. I figure that'd be a great candidate for the SSD and without any further research I figured I'd chuck my 16GB of DDR3 from the ThinkPad into the Macbook thinking that'd work.
Nope.
Well, kinda. It would turn on. It would post properly. You could even get it going about halfway through the installation of Yosemite and then it would reboot. Tried one stick, mixing one with one of the original sticks....etc. Did nothing to alleviate the issue. Installed the original 2GB sticks (4GB total) and it loaded Yosemite without issue.
Migrated all my data over, SSD working like a boss, which unfortunately seems to point to the ThinkPad pooping the bed on the I/O side. I will add that in diagnosing the ThinkPad I also ran Memtest86+ on it and found no problems, the RAM checks out fine. I also had some other known-good sticks which would not work in the Macbook.
So, I checked Google and found some interesting things:
1. Supposedly only the 13" version of the 2010 MBP can support up to 16GB of RAM, the 15 should not even post.
2. The 15" version only "officially" supports 8GB of RAM.
3. The issue is the speed of the RAM.
Apparently the SPD info is adhered to for whatever reason and unlike on a PC where normally the lowest common denominator in the SPD chain is the one that sets the timing for the lot, in the case of the MBP, the 1600Mhz DDR3 I put in (and the 1333 sticks I also tried) are not reliable and cause kernel panics even when mixed with one of the OEM 1066 sticks because the chipset tries to run them at 1600Mhz and poops the bed.
There have been folks that reprogrammed the SPD on the sticks to 1066 and gained stability but this was on the 13" MBP, not the 15 that I have in my possession. But then mine shouldn't have posted period, LOL!
So, I'm waffling on whether to order a Kingston or Crucial matched set of 8GB 1066Mhz DIMM's for it and see if it is stable or just get the "correct" 8GB kit. It would seem that the capacity wasn't the issue, as it exhibited the same symptoms even with 4GB of the faster RAM in it which is causing me to lean ever so slightly in the 16GB kit's direction.
Anybody else play around with this? I'm extremely surprised at the SPD behaviour, as it is just an Intel chipset (5-series)
My ThinkPad T420S began acting funny the other day; one of the Windows 10 updates failed and then it had trouble booting, was freezing on boot...etc. I figured the old Seagate 320GB drive was catching the dead so I ordered a Kingston V300 480GB SSD for it and installed it yesterday. After having some exciting fun with installation media and my DVD-RW drive I eventually used an external USB drive and got Windows 7 reinstalled. All went well until I copied my old data back, which involved a lot of I/O and after moving over a large chunk of data, it froze on the following reboot. Powered it off, back on, it came back up and worked fine. Next restart, same deal, same process, but taking two shots this time, and it came back up. And the boot was taking a lot longer at the windows logo.
Anyway, this carried on and eventually it froze at the login screen looping the audio. Since the boot problem was consistent across two drives I doubted it was the SSD. And since the system was fine once it was booted, this also reinforced that. I did manage to get one BSOD about a bad driver, but that only happened once. Updating various drivers did nothing, had the latest RST installed..etc. So, I'm thinking the controller on the board is taking a dive and I have some work I'm on the road for starting tomorrow. Great timing
Only spare rig I have kicking around is a mid-2010 Macbook Pro 15" with an i5. I figure that'd be a great candidate for the SSD and without any further research I figured I'd chuck my 16GB of DDR3 from the ThinkPad into the Macbook thinking that'd work.
Nope.
Well, kinda. It would turn on. It would post properly. You could even get it going about halfway through the installation of Yosemite and then it would reboot. Tried one stick, mixing one with one of the original sticks....etc. Did nothing to alleviate the issue. Installed the original 2GB sticks (4GB total) and it loaded Yosemite without issue.
Migrated all my data over, SSD working like a boss, which unfortunately seems to point to the ThinkPad pooping the bed on the I/O side. I will add that in diagnosing the ThinkPad I also ran Memtest86+ on it and found no problems, the RAM checks out fine. I also had some other known-good sticks which would not work in the Macbook.
So, I checked Google and found some interesting things:
1. Supposedly only the 13" version of the 2010 MBP can support up to 16GB of RAM, the 15 should not even post.
2. The 15" version only "officially" supports 8GB of RAM.
3. The issue is the speed of the RAM.
Apparently the SPD info is adhered to for whatever reason and unlike on a PC where normally the lowest common denominator in the SPD chain is the one that sets the timing for the lot, in the case of the MBP, the 1600Mhz DDR3 I put in (and the 1333 sticks I also tried) are not reliable and cause kernel panics even when mixed with one of the OEM 1066 sticks because the chipset tries to run them at 1600Mhz and poops the bed.
There have been folks that reprogrammed the SPD on the sticks to 1066 and gained stability but this was on the 13" MBP, not the 15 that I have in my possession. But then mine shouldn't have posted period, LOL!
So, I'm waffling on whether to order a Kingston or Crucial matched set of 8GB 1066Mhz DIMM's for it and see if it is stable or just get the "correct" 8GB kit. It would seem that the capacity wasn't the issue, as it exhibited the same symptoms even with 4GB of the faster RAM in it which is causing me to lean ever so slightly in the 16GB kit's direction.
Anybody else play around with this? I'm extremely surprised at the SPD behaviour, as it is just an Intel chipset (5-series)