Ram Upgrade Problem WinXP

[Jeffxor]

I have seen a few similar posts about this problem already on the message boards.

Currently my friend is running winXP on his systems and it is running fine with only the one stick of 128 SDRAM. However installing a seecond stick of exactly similar 128 SDRAM into the board cause errors on windows bootup. It makes it to the windows splash screen and then simply dies and reboots itself.

As far as I can see there is little problem with the ram as we have used both seperatley to boot WinXP fine. However the addition of the second stick causes all of the problems.
We have also tried all different combinations of the RAM in the motherboard and nothing has worked.

I am by no means a guru on XP as this is my first use of the new XP OS but surely the addition of RAM surely shouldn't cause errors like this.

If anyone can shed some light on the problem and possibly some kind of fix it would be greatly appreciated. Sorry about the shortage of system specs....

MoBO: Gigabyte (GA-6BX7) Intel 440BX AGP SET
CPU: Intel P3 733

 

[Arrow]

Probably due to incompatibility of the two DIMMs.


Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/canada/about.php?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/canada/about.php?affiliateid=319048</A></b>

 

[joesk]

Well I was going to say Bah! But I will give him the benefit of doubt. But I will say I was probably one of those post's you read about memory probs. The help here, and I do say they were help. Pointed out that it could be P/S problem, or that it was dimms that didn't like to work together, and lastly it was incompatable ramn to my MB. Well non of those were the case, as I had changed my P/S that didn't fix it. I then tried different ram, that didn't fix it. So as a last resort I put an old drive that had minme on it and walla it worked fine. So now I knew it was somthing to do with XP. Well low and behold I mebtioned it and got responses back saying it was still my P/S cause XP uses more juice. Ennnnnnnn! Wrong, as any good tech could tell you. When one billion transistors flip a thousand times per second they consume the same amount of power, no matter what OS they are doing it in.!!!
Now to save you a lot of grief, and this might not fix your problem as PC's are a finniky lot, Just re-install win XP. For some ungodly reason the M$ code factory somehow made some kinda of setting that lord only knows where and how to change it, that does something funky to how memory is addressed. Now mind you it isn't SIZE that matters, it's the Locallity (I.E. how many dimm slots) that does. So if you in M$ wonderland (and you know who you are) know what this setting is, please share your knowledge.

Sorry if I seem a bit obtruse, but this little forray into XP wonderland has cost me a bit of change (in the $350 range, not counting the cost of upgrading ram). And it is to no fault of the good guys who frequent this forum, they know a lot more then I do (atleast a majority of them), because when dealing with the great XP monster anything can be the problem.

BTW you have to do a Fresh install as XP copies the registry setting of a previous install, I tried and it kept having the same problem. And no!!! it wasn't any of the drivers I installed as they are all in my new XP install and they work fine.

I think I am gonna send a bill to Bill.

joesk