Added Memory, now Windows is unhappy.

[Artois]

Dear all, hope you can figure this one out...
I received an extra 128Meg Ram DIMM for my PC (700Mhz Athlon, MSI 6316 Motherboard, 128Meg Ram, running Windows 98 SE) which I duly installed. I turned the PC back on and Windows went through the motions of booting up until the Windows loading screen where it reset itself, eventually back to the 'safe mode' menu screen. Any further attempts to get in to boot up under normal met with similar fate, although under the safe mode it was fine.
Has anyone any suggestions about what I do now. Under safe mode it is showing the correct amount of Ram 256Meg.

Cheers

Total Baffled

 

[Zorlod]

If you read some of the disclaimers on the Ram retailer's sites, it specifies that supposedly if you buy the lower grade ram, it does not work well with AMD athlon processors as it causes stability problems. I dont know if this would be an example, or if they are just selling us a lot of bull in order for us to buy the name brand memory from them.

 

[Karl Blessing]

as a last resort, since rams even higher grade is pretty cheap now, I would head over to crucial.com , chose your motherboard's manufactuer from the list, then the model number, it'll list all the rams that they make, that works best with that motherboard, I got 2 sticks of 256Meg PC133 7.5ns ECC Cas2 (fastest you can get at the moment aside from the ECC[Error Checking and Correcting]) for about 99$ each, now the price is almost 60$ each, and that was just over a month, but I'm still happy with my purchase, since the rams really outperforms my generic 128Megs PC100 I had prior. Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[tkral]

Definately sounds like a RAM problem. The first thing to do is to pull the new RAM out and then see if the problem goes away. If it does your new RAM has probably got defects. (This is all too common with generic (OEM) memory). Try to find a good memory tester (I've had good luck with Tufftest)and test the memory. Do this repeatedly because virtually all of the testers do not test every data bit, so the problem may not show up on the first few passes. I usually figure that 40 passes without an error is pretty safe.

I have found that Brand name memory is definately worth the money in a commercial situation (reselling or SI). However if you are willing to go back to the reseller again and again until you get memory that tests OK, then once it is good it will probably stay good.

Hope this helps

tkral

 

[Gort]

Also try pulling the old RAM out and run it with just the new RAM. If it runs okay you might have a density conflict.
I had a stick of high density RAM and one of low density. The PC ran fine with either one in, but not together, I got a second stick of low density and it works fine with two low desity sticks.

Jon Holmen

http://www.djcyborg.com

http://www.i-hate-computers.org

 

[Artois]

Cheers for all your help guys...

 

[ack3]

Problem may be due to new size of RAM. See article in LangaList newsletter (free) for 6/18/01
See at

http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm

Luck, ack3

 

[Artois]

Dear all,
once again many thanks for your help with the problem. I solved with the aid of some class IT guys and a boot-up disk.

Cheers

Artois

;-)