Computer keeps restarting

[viperfmg]

Hi,

I'm a novice when it comes to computers. I read a similar post to mine on this site but it didn't really help me solve my problem. I have an 800mhz HP Pavilion 8755C that came with 128MB SD RAM. My dad still uses it for just word processing and such. Recently I purchased 2 256MB SD RAM and after installing it I get this message:

"we apologize for the inconvenience, but windows did not start successfully.
a recent hardware or software change might have caused this."

After this message the computer restarts and the message appears again...and then the computer restarts again. This process just continues.

I have 2 ram slots and I tried installing each ram stick individually in each slot and the computer works fine. But when I use both at the same time it doesn't seem to work. I checked the specifications of my computer and it says max 512ram.

Also I checked the BIOS and it recognizes that 2 256ram sticks are installed. I just never get around to using the computer because it keeps restarting.

Can anyone help? Much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[o1die]

Use just one stick, and press the "del" key to enter the bios. Look for a "memory mapping" setting. Enabled or disabled are the choices in my system. Not much else to change; good brands of ram are crucial, corsair, kingston, samsung, pqi, and pny. Single sided ram runs better on some older boards. And value or high latency ram sometimes causes the problems you describe. Crucial guarantees it's ram to work when purchased from their website.