Gary said:
I have just recently increased the size of memory on my
PC from 512kb to 1gb. Since then XP has allowed me to
log on, but during the now very short process of starting
up a warning dialogue box pops up, disapears in about 1/2
a second, a blue screen with some advice pops up and then
diaspears in about 1/2 a second and my PCstarts up again.
When i take out the memory module all is fine!! (I have
seen a few memory addresses on the blue screen, but it
diaspears too quickly for me to read anything?
I've heard about some probs with large memory in Win
98/Me etc. But can anyone help?
Processor Athlon XP3200+
Motherboard XFX Mach 4 motherboard with nVidia nForce 2
chipset.
Try removing the original 512 mb of RAM and running with just the new
512 mb installed.
If the computer works okay with either the old or new RAM installed by
itself but has problems when both are installed then that almost
always means that the RAM modules (old and new) are not compatible
with each other.
RAM from different manufacturers, or even from the same manufacturer
but different production lots, can have differences in the internal
layout and/or material composition of the RAM chips. These
differences can affect the strength and timing of the signals returned
from the RAM and Windows is sensitive to these differences.
If this is the problem then there is no simple cure or work around
available. The choices are to either use the computer with just the
one type of RAM (old or new) installed, or to replace the old RAM with
another module that is identical to the existing new one.
With 512 mb of RAM it is possible that increasing to 1 gb may not
provide any substantive benefits. Adding more memory can noticeably
improve performance only if the added memory results in reduced usage
of the virtual memory paging file. Therefore if the paging file is
not currently being used to any significant extent then adding more
memory will not provide a significant improvement.
Unfortunately there is no ready way of determing actual paging file
usage provided with Windows XP - it does not have an equivalent to the
'Memory Manager - Swap File In Use" reporting provided by the System
Monitor utility in Windows 95/98/Me.
There is a free utility that you can download and run which will
provide this information for you. It was written by MVP Bill James and
you can get if from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/
If that utility shows actual page file usage of 50 mb or more on a
regular basis then that is indicative of fairly significant paging
file activity. Adding more RAM will reduce or even eliminate entirely
this activity thereby improving performance.
This apples regardless of how much or how little RAM is currently
installed in the computer, at least up to the 4 gb RAM maximum for
Windows XP.
Hope this is of some assistance.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
