512mb ram, windows won't boot.

Any idea why inserting a stick of 512mb pc133 ram in my pc makes window crash after the diskscan blue screen bit? It just hangs. Put in my old 128mb memory and runs fine.

Anything I can do other than throwing the chip away?:)

RAM is probably incompatible with your motherboard.

Is the 128mb one PC133 also? or PC100? Other than that if you have a really old motherboard it could just be that it doesn't support sticks of 512mb SDRAM.

download memtest bung on CD and boot from it. It'll tell you 100% if the RAM is frigged or not.

incompatible or damaged..I had same issue and when i change memory stick (same as previous one), things working fine

there is an iso here:

http://www.memtest86.com/

I had RAM that works fine on it's own before but shows errors on memtest when plugged in with other RAM.

Yeah I think it's the latter, the bios only reports 256mb when booting so half of the chip is fried or it's just not being detected.

It's 133 too, while my old mem was pc100. Could be both.

Thanks for the link Grey, I'll probably give it a go tonight, not got my burner in at the moment.

Naughty was it 512mb also? I didn't think mine would support 512mb from the start, but the chip was going cheap. He who dares...loses :)

>Any idea why inserting a stick of 512mb pc133 ram in my pc
>makes window crash after the diskscan blue screen bit? It
>just hangs. Put in my old 128mb memory and runs fine.

It could be several problems:

a) memory is faulty - Most likely

b) Memory is incompatible with your mainboard. Your chipset doesn't support more than 256MB per socket

c) Memory is incompatible with your mainboard. The DIMM is built from chips of size or make that cannot be used in your mainboard.

d) Timing problems, if your DIMM is PC66, then it propably won't run at 100MHz or 133MHz.

>download memtest bung on CD and boot from it. It'll tell
>you 100% if the RAM is frigged or not.

Actually it won't. It will work in most cases, but not all. I've seen many cases where memtest logged no errors, and a real test system found real errors, or the reverse.


Andy

Reset the bios by loading bios defaults.

This was my first impression. You might want to hunt down a bios update and flash your bios to see if the updated one fixes this, but it's a bit of a longshot if you're board is as old as I think it is.

Dude, Contact me at Damien.Sturdy@...

That stick worked as it came out of a working, but old, machine. If it turns out dodgy dont chuck it, send it back and i'll refund.

It's most likely that your system doesn't support 512mb in a socket. I'm afraid I didnt think of this when sending it.

I really hope this can be fixed man.

Would that really do anything? I know how to do it, it's just man..it's like..all the way over on my desk..i'd have to get up..walk like..three, yes three steps..then pick it up...and the wires! no no, this is just a bad idea..must do better one eyed :)

Send an e-mail Cyngus, don't worry about the money it's only a score but if you want the chip back I can send it. May as well go to some use.

Cant send you a mail from work :P

If you send it back i can either use the money you paid me to look for a couple of 256mb's and send those, or just send back whats in the envelope, which i havent got yet, haha- it's still at the post office.

Yeah I would be grateful if you could swap it for a couple of 256mbs.Thanks :)

I'll send the chip back probably next monday as it's a fiver and i'm skint at the moment :)

At least then I know it works. Sounds like 2 256mb sticks is what you need and I can get those.
Oh and sorry for the inconvenience, I was hoping we could all be using VC++ tonight!

[edit]

Even though it's not working for you, It's one cool looking stick o'ram isnt it? :)

Can't you just snap the 512mb stick in half?







I'll get my coat... :P

I doub't you'll get this one to snap :P

And Ant, don't even think about it!

Forget your coat bigop, just walk away now. :)




No need to apologize, not your fault I have a cold war era pc.
You'll get used to code::blocks. I find it pretty good now. You might want to turn off auto-complition though. causes more hang ups than does speed ups.