Regarding Hello World Template

I looked at the hello world small template and in 11.0 it does not use printf so are you using an older version of the tools? At one time I think that software used alt_printf but I'm not sure when the change was made.

I can't stress this enough though. Just because you can run code out of a memory doesn't mean it's functional. A processor doesn't typically stress a memory interface so I would make sure that memory is really functional (i.e. test it with a DMA) before ruling it out as a culprit. Also if you have not written off-chip timing constraints your design might work for one compile and fail for the next if you breath on it due to Quartus II not being provided enough information about your off-chip timing requirements.