New RAM booting troubles

[osuman]

System Specs:
Gateway desktop
1.4 GHz Celeron Processor
128MB of PC133 RAM
20gig drive

I bought a 256MB stick of PC133 to add to this system. The new RAM went in fine and the BIOS recongnized it and the system begins to boot without any problems. However, once windows starts to load then I get a problem with a physical memory dump. It had Windows XP so I thought that the OS had problems with the new hardware without being reinstalled.

I planned on rebuilding the OS anyway and downgrading to Win2k. However, during the 2k install process, the installation program would freeze. I took the new RAM out and finished installing windows without any problems, however, when I put it back in then it freezes when booting much the same as XP did.

It seems that perhaps the new ram that I got is bad, but I've never heard or had a problem where it doesn't show that it is faulty until part way through the boot process.

To troubleshoot it, I took out the original and left in just the new stick that I bought. This resulted in the same thing. That is, the BIOS will load and then Windows will get about half way through startup before the system halts.

I don't know if it matters but I bought "high-density" ram. I'm not really sure what the difference between "high" and "low" density is if the RAM is the same size.

Any ideas?

 

[Oddjob03]

With gateway and dell computers usally they only except ram provided by the vendor in question. Did you buy the ram from gateway????

 

[osuman]

I didn't buy it directly from Gateway.

However, I've never heard of a company specifically designing a system to only work with their parts. I've bought a RAM upgrade for my parents Dell computer and it worked just fine.

Maybe you meant something else?

 

[ANFPS26]

I have a Gateway and it takes any brand of RAM, but it will only recognise 128MB sticks and not 256MB. That might be your problem. Try a 128 instead of 256.

Jim

 

[franklin97355]

Sounds like a bad stick of memory. I'd exchange it.

 

[BadBigBen]

I would suggest to you to get a namebrand type of RAM stick... had similiar probs way back where my comp would freeze after about 5 min or so... turned out that the RAM stick in use didn't function correctly once it hit operating temperatures... while it was still cold it worked fine and any memtesting software didn't find any problems with it... after buying a namebrand (Infineon to name it) it worked wonders no lockups since...

Ben