problems adding memory

[Richard Ward]

My wife has a Sony Vaio, about 4 years old, with a 1.2 ghz celeron,
running windows 2000 advanced server. She has 256 megs of ram, in the
form of a single stick of PC133. She needed to upgrade the memory, so I
bought two 512 meg sticks of PC133. I left her original stick of memory
in place, and added one of the sticks of 512. Booted up the computer,
it showed 256 megs of ram. Switched which stick was in which slot,
still showed 256 megs of ram. Took out the 256 meg stick, leaving just
the 512 meg stick, and it shows 512 megs of ram. Added the other 512
meg stick, and it won't boot up at all. Took out the second 512 meg
stick, and it shows as 512 megs of ram. Put the 256 stick back in the
empty slot, and it shows 256 megs of ram.

The results have been very consistent. With one stick of 256, it shows
256. With a stick of 512 it shows 512. With a stick of 512 and a stick
of 256 it shows 256. With two sticks of 512 it won't boot up at all.

I don't know if the motherboard won't handle more than 512, or if I need
to update the BIOS, or if I'm doing something stupid and not noticing.
Any ideas?

 

[BruceM]

I'd guess a limit of 512 for the comp??
I'd reckon 3 sticks or 128 would show correctly.
I'd reckon 2 sticks of 128 plus 1 of 256 would also show.
I'll see if I can find specs for it.

 

[Richard Ward]

I tried googling the model number (which I intended to include in the
original post PCV-RX540, and it shows a maximum memory supported of 512.

Probably a stupid question, but is there any way around that, short of
replacing the mother board?

 

[BruceM]

Well looks like it could be a desktop or a laptop so how about giving us a
model number & a better description so we know a bit more?

 

[BruceM]

Only thing you can do is see if there is an updated bios that might allow
more but, no, not much you can do about it really.
Thing is that it was probably designed for 98 & 512 would be plenty for
that.
Try killing as many applications from running in the background will free up
a lot of resources & memory & give the machins a lift.

 

[kony]

My wife has a Sony Vaio, about 4 years old, with a 1.2 ghz celeron,
running windows 2000 advanced server. She has 256 megs of ram, in the
form of a single stick of PC133. She needed to upgrade the memory, so I
bought two 512 meg sticks of PC133. I left her original stick of memory
in place, and added one of the sticks of 512. Booted up the computer,
it showed 256 megs of ram. Switched which stick was in which slot,
still showed 256 megs of ram. Took out the 256 meg stick, leaving just
the 512 meg stick, and it shows 512 megs of ram. Added the other 512
meg stick, and it won't boot up at all. Took out the second 512 meg
stick, and it shows as 512 megs of ram. Put the 256 stick back in the
empty slot, and it shows 256 megs of ram.

The results have been very consistent. With one stick of 256, it shows
256. With a stick of 512 it shows 512. With a stick of 512 and a stick
of 256 it shows 256. With two sticks of 512 it won't boot up at all.

I don't know if the motherboard won't handle more than 512, or if I need
to update the BIOS, or if I'm doing something stupid and not noticing.
Any ideas?

It's likely to have a motherboard with Intel 815 chipset,
which has a 512MB memory limit.