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Does Windows ME limit the max MB of memory?

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I've been wrestling with this problem for a little while. Not sure what's going on, but one responce to a post I made a couple days back says that Windows ME can only handle up to 512 MB of ram. Is this right? I've got an Athlon 700MHz computer with one of the earlier Athlon motherboards... The motherboard manual says that it supports up to 768MB of PC100 memory. (PC133 didn't exist at the time, from what I understand...) Now, the memory that I have in the system right now is 128MB PC100... I have two 256MB PC133 sticks of memory, totalling 512MB... (The sticks were packaged together)

When I boot my computer up with both sticks of ram in the remaining DIMM slots, the memory test seems to work just fine. It cycles through the max memory, 640MB (128 + 512), 3 times... Then stops at 640MB of memory... Then, it continues to boot. When it starts to load windows, the machine either freezes or reboots automatically... When I go to safe mode, Windows ME loads up into safe mode easily enough, and under properties, it shows I am running the 640MB that I'm supposed to... Yet, in a reboot, it still freezes. That's just the situation that I've been dealing with... Is this a Windows ME problem? Or, is this a RAM problem? Or something entirely different?

Don't criticize me the day I don't know. Criticize me the day I don't want to know.

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go to run and type in msconfig look down to the right see advance tab click it when it opens reset max memory to 1 gb
the operating system does not matter i have installed 8gb on w2k servers and 1gb on me computers the mother board is what make the decision weather it can handle above 512
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Ok, here's the update. I've taken out my 128MB stick of ram, put in the two 256MB sticks, totalling 512MB... Now, when the system starts up in this configuration, it gets to where windows is loading nicely, and then before it gets to the desktop, it resets the computer. After it gets to the message saying if I want to go into safe mode or normal boot up... I chose normal, and it goes into windows. The only problem is that it doesn't load up my video drivers correctly when this happens, so everything is displayed in 16 colors and 640x480 resolution. <I'm normally at 32-bit color and 1800x1440 res...>

Getting annoyed at this, I reinstalled the drivers for my video card, that didn't work... Then, I just gave up. I put the 128MB stick back into the motherboard, and it booted up perfectly. I don't know if it's Windows or the Ram or my motherboard.

Don't criticize me the day I don't know. Criticize me the day I don't want to know.

Oh, and I did run that msconfig and forced the max memory to be 768MB <The max that my motherboard can handle> and that didn't seem to work, either... So, this one stumped me.

Don't criticize me the day I don't know. Criticize me the day I don't want to know.

try booting up using one stick at a time.
see if any fail.
if all are good, try then one stick at a time in each of the ram slots to test slot integrity.


OEMs selling "High End"PCs with integrated video will be forced into Q3tournaments using a TNT2M64!

On a newer machine (Pentium 3.0GHz w/full 4GB 32-bit bus): 1.5GB works; 2.0GB doesn't.
msconfig limit did not need be set on this configuration (IBM Thinkcentre).

Older machine supporting 1GB max (30A/32D-bit): 704 Mb. (K5S7A motherboard)
(256MB video and 64MB PCI overhead subtracted from the 1GB available addressing)
msconfig needed to set limit here.
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