Win98se Not showing correct amount of RAM

[Cassaro]

I have an older machine that is running win98. It has 32mg of RAM but the control panel/system only shows 12mg of RAM. I added an extra 16mg (2 8mg chips) and the amount of RAM shown still only registers 12mg.
Has anyone seen this happen?

Chuck
tek-tips@aspenpkg.com

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[KeyTech]

make sure the sticks of RAM are in decending order on the mother board, I think if they are not properly sorted like this they might not register, also can you check if the all the RAM is buffered/registered compared to unbuffered/unregisterd?????? Jay~

"I have to think of a funny footer to
put in here!!!???"

~KeyTech

 

[Cassaro]

Jay,

Thanks for the suggestion. The memory that is in there is the origional 32mg with no changes to the order of the chips. The extra memory that was added sould be in the correct order because the origional 32mg is made up from 2 16mg chips so, the order I have them in is 16-16-8-8 which should give me a total of 48mg. But the machine is still only seeing 12mg. Origionally I was thinking that a memory module may have gone bad but that should have shown 16mg of memory not 12mg (this was prior to adding the other mem).

Chuck
tek-tips@aspenpkg.com

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[TerryD]

Go into BIOS and look for something like LBA, Large or ECHS and make sure that this in enabled.

Did you Fdisk before you formatted? Is there anything on the drive that you need to save?

If not, I would suggest you reformatting again.

Run fdisk first, choose the whole hard drive.

Here are some step by step instructions.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q255/8/67.ASP

You may need to use datalifeguard tools for western digital to overlay your bios to get full capacity. You can read about it here

http://www.westerndigital.com/service/FAQ/general.html#528+

When you do this, what does it say, 16 bit or 32 bit?

My computer, right click, properties, performance

 

[SimonDavis]

I don't think you should format your hard disk (Sorry Terry, can I gently point out it's a RAM problem, not hard disk).

Just though I'd mention it, just in case . . . !

 

[cdogg]

Yes, by all means...DO NOT FORMAT
It is obviously a RAM problem or setting in the BIOS. Formatting the hard disk will affect neither.

crowd wonders...what was TerryD thinking?

 

[paulwood]

The only time I have seen somthing like this before, was on an old Dell machine that was very specific about what size Ram to put in each slot. If you don't have a m/b manual, do you know who the manufacturer is, if so do they have a support website?

 

[Guest_imported]

if you are technical give me the ram specs: simm 72pin OR EDO OR sdram 168pin?

What is the motherboard Socket 7 etc, or pentium 2 compatible?

What is the cpu chip?

Firstly if it says 12MB obviously take out the 2 8MB ram. When putting RAM in a pc always check what pc it is and what the ram is, and if you do insert the RAM, make sure it is in the correct way or you may do some damage. sometimes different ram will not run together. No offence but you have to be more specific or take it to your nearest PC hardware store

 

[TerryD]

Oops, had my mind on another thread. Forgot the email notification or I would have corrected sooner.

 

[TerryD]

I did find this though. It might apply.

"Watch out for 16 MB non-parity SIMMs that have chips on both sides of the SIMM (parity SIMMs usually do). Some of these are showing up on the market that are actually composite (even though 16 MB SIMMs aren't supposed to be) and some systems will only recognize them as being half of their true size. Ask for the SIMMs to be replaced with non-composite versions."