Vista + 3GB = hangs at shutdown, please help

Not sure if this should be in hardware or software, but basically vista isn't liking 3GB of ram. Heres what I used to have, 1 GB corsair xms ddr400 + 512x2 patriot ddr400 (total of 2GB) in single channel mode. I am using windows vista ultimate 32 bit edition.

I ordered another 1GB stick of corsair xms, and added it so I could run dual channel 3GB (1x1GB + 1x512MB in each channel), at first vista would hang at boot, but after manually setting the timings to be the same it booted and worked perfectly, except...

Vista wouldnt shut down. It would just hang at shutting down, so I turned it off by holding down my power switch for 5 seconds. Next problem...

So then I updated windows update and had to hard shutoff again, on bootup it would hang at configuring updates before the login screen. I hard-shut down and took out the 512MB sticks.

Now I have 2GB of corsair xms (1GBx2) in dual channel mode and it works allright, but I kinda want vista to work with all 3... Any help would be extremely appreciated.

My specs:
-ASUS A8N5X (socket 393) mobo
-AMD X2 4200+ (OC'ed to 2.6 stable, tested thoroughly - I even reduced to stock clocks to make sure this whole ordeal wasn't my OC's fault)
-2 or 3 GB of ddr400 ram
-geforce 7900gt

I think that's all the relevant stuff.

THANK YOU

 

bump, please help

 

Have you looked into a possible BIOS update? Maybe the Asus web site has a fix for your model of motherboard....
Are you running any kind of memory optimizer or memory freeing program? These types of programs can cause hangs at shutdown.... just end the program before shutting down and all should be well... Also, some motherboards can only run over 2 gb if they're DDR333 (especially boards for AMD socket 754 and 939); if they're DDR400 you'll get all kinds of flakiness. I have an MSI board, and it won't be stable if I install the maximum amount of RAM at 400mhz; if I use all DDR333, it's fine.... check with Asus.... did the PC run OK with WinXP???

hd2k

 

Hmm I'll check into that, thanks. I do have the most recent bios revision though.