Windows XP recognizes just 256MB out of the 1.2GB of RAM

[zoobooboozoo]

Hello there, i just switched the broken HDD on an old PC with another one, formatted and installed Windows XP SP3 on it.
The motherboard on the PC - nForce 3 250GB.

When I got to 'My Computer'-->'Properties' it says 1.81 GHz 256MB of RAM, while there are 1.2GB of RAM.

I checked my hardware using CPU-Z, and what I got is what I really have inside the PC:
2 X 512MB
1 X 256 MB
and a total of 1.2GB

the specifications of the three cards is the same, all PC3200(200MHz), and the only difference between them is the CAS Latency which is 2.5 on the 256MB card and 3 on the two 512MBs.



Anyone knows what might be wrong?

 

[omnixius]

I have seen some cases where 1 bad memory causes some or all of the other memory to go missing. I have installed 2 1GB chips only to have it see 670mb of memory because one of the chips was bad.

I would recommend removing 1 chip at a time to see it it suddenly sees the remaining memory.

Also I did this just the other day. I had a computer that only saw half the memory I had installed. It turned out I simply hadn't seated them down in the socket all the way. So I removed them and put them back in firmly and it worked fine.

It can be other things but these are some simple things to try first.

 

[zoobooboozoo]

When I pulled the 256MB out it recognizes the 2 X 512MB