WinXP will not boot with 4GB RAM installed

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pkdesign

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This has been driving me crazy. I recently purchased 2GB (2 x 1GB) of RAM for my dual boot WinXP Home (32-bit)/Vista Ultimate (64-bit) machine. It currently has 2GB installed. The machine recognizes the 4GB of RAM in BIOS, Vista will boot and recognize the RAM, CPU-Z recognizes the RAM, and I can boot into safe-mode of WinXP. But whenever I try to boot normally into WinXP the machine gets stuck at the boot screen (the one with the progress bar). It never fully boots.

If I remove one stick of RAM (it doesn't matter which stick or which slot) WinXP will boot fine and register 3GB of single channel RAM. I have also tried to turn off every service and start-up item to see if that is what it was but to no avail.

Does anyone have a clue as to what is going on? It doesn't seem to be a motherboard issue or RAM issue (machine wouldn't boot into Vista or safe-mode if it was I'm guessing). All the RAM is from the same manufacturer (Patriot according to CPU-Z) and is the same speed (PC3200 400MHz), etc. I know WinXP will not show the full 4GB but that is not the issue. I just want ti to boot!

Help!
 

pkdesign

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Feb 7, 2011
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Okay. After three days of messing with this I have figured it out and thought I would leave it here for posterity in case it happens to anyone else. I would love an explanation if anyone has one!

Turns out it was the video card! I finally decided to strip the machine to its essentials and once I took out the video card the machine booted with no problems and recognized all (well 3.5 GB in the case of WinXP) of the RAM.

I thought it may have been the ATI 5450 with 512MB of RAM but when I put a NVIDIA 7300GT with 256MB of RAM it did the same thing. I have no clue as to why this happens. I guess I will have to make do with the on board NVIDIA 6150LE.

Hope this helps someone.
 

pkdesign

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Even though I have solved my problem I would still like to know why this happens? Why can't I have a video card with 512MB of on board RAM and use 4GB of system RAM. Why are they effecting each other? Anyone have an explanation?

Thanks.
 



In your BIOS may be a choice selection to make for what the primary video consist of.

If it is set to PCI and you are using a PCIe card, boom... or if set to use on-board, and actually use an add-on card, boom. Set this correctly.


 
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