Clear the CMOS!! Take the battery out from your mobo for 30mins-1hour. 30 mins is fine...
Since you have 2x2GBs of RAM, take one stick out...that will leave 2GBs. Check the RAM voltage...i would increase it to 2.0v...or at the least 1.9v. One of your sticks of RAM could be bad causing a crash...so if one set does not work...change it to the other and reinstall (if it crashes again only)
Go to your BIOS and change the boot order. Make sure your CD-ROM is first then the hard drive...you can disable anything else like Floppy unless you have one
This one probably isnt an issue, but before you start just check the temps in BIOS...
You can run a single stick of RAM, it will just run in single channel mode. That's a very common thing to do when troubleshooting. I agree that the RAM could be causing these problems. What exact RAM kit do you have?
You should manually set the RAM speed/timings/voltage to the manufacturers specs in the BIOS and run Memtest86+ for a few hours to test for RAM errors.
Wow, I would definitely say the RAM is the problem! That RAM needs insane voltage to work correctly. The DDR2 standard is 1.8v and that RAM needs 2.3v!
It looks like you should manually set the RAM to DDR2 1066 @ 5-5-5-15 timings and 2.3v (+.5v in the BIOS).
mherrington post the exact model ram you have before you volt it.
He already did - KHX8500D2K2/4G. Do a search for that on Newegg and it only returns one kit. That's how I came up with the suggestions to set the RAM at DDR2 1066 with 5-5-5-15 timings at 2.3v. That's what the RAM specs show. The Kingston product page shows the same specs.
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