New Ram Sticks Causing Problems, as usual

[Carolen]

I just got a new job, and we have a SLOW computer. I am not a computer whiz by any means but I know the basics. I have added RAM to my own computer before so I thought nothing of doing it to their computer.

Here is what I know about the computer. It was running with 224 MB of yes (yes 224, not 256) And it has an AMD Duron 1.3MHZ processor. I am not sure on how to tell what kind of motherboard it has this written on it in one place K7SEM 15-A01-013010 rev: 3.0A, another place it says BCS Elite group on it. No idea if that helps any of you or not. Anyways, It has two slots for RAM only one stick in it. So I naturally bought two sticks. They are 512 MB sticks (bought on NewEgg.com) made by PQI (pqimemory.com) They say Ms3812UOE 5122MB SDRAM PC-133 on them. (oh the original RAM says PC 133 256MB).

After installing the two sticks if I goto Control Panel, then System (were running XP) It says I have 992MB of Ram.

The first day I installed the RAM it worked great, then had an absolute failure and turned off when accessing some music. Then worked fine until late when it brought up some error in Quickbooks and I could not run a report I usually run. Then I rebooted it a few times and it worked.

The next day it worked fine, then the next day it worked OK in the morning and a second user (not me) reported some issiue accessing quickbooks that night. When I came in today Quickbooks when I clicked on it would load for asecond then disappear and not open. I removed the ram and put the old back in. Everything works.

I have since experiemented and currently have both new sticks of Ram in and it reads 992MB or ram and seems to be working. But I cannot keep having random errors. What do I do? Is this a terrible brand I should avoid (I can still return it for a refund).

Please help! I need it!

 

[Mousemonkey]

Return the RAM and check ECS website for compatible RAM

 

[utaka95]

Newegg sold PQI ram branded as Rosewill for a while, and then dropped them, presumably because of a high failure/return rate. Now Rosewill/Newegg won't even reply to email RMA requests for this "lifetime" ram. Nice, huh? So yeah, I think it's a pretty crappy brand.

 

[Mondoman]

It's always important to run a memory testing program (for example, memtest86+) after changing the memory in a system, to make sure the RAM is working properly. It sounds like the RAM you installed was giving errors. Remember, too, that if the computer is used while the RAM is giving errors, the files on the hard drive can get corrupted, which can't be fixed just by going back to the old RAM.

 

[trulaker9]

It might be a bad stick of RAM, but I doubt it. I can almost guarantee that you didnt check the RAMs compatibility with your motherboard, and i'm sure thats what the problem is.

 

[Carolen]

I did not check compatability with my Motherboard, I don't even know how to go about doing that.

 

[Mondoman]

Don't feel bad, the only way to "check compatibility" is to install it on your system, then run diagnostic software like memtest86+ (available free at memtest.org).

 

[Carolen]

I figured out the problem. I bought "high density" ram. My motherboard only supports "Low Density" ram. I ordered two sticks of Low Density ram from Kingston. It works GREAT, no problems.

 

[dannyaa]

Umm, first: some of the problems you mentioned may be bad RAM. However, the memory amount reporting: that's shared video memory. You mentioned 224mb instead of 256mb and 992 instead of 1024. In both cases, 32mb of RAM is being used for your video as whatever graphics card that computer has needs to access system memory (rather than having its own dedicated memory). That reporting issue is not a memory problem.