Problems with 2GB RAM

J

J Jones

Hello,

I have a client that has been having problems with her machine for many
years now. She finally brought the computer to my shop and I diagnosed the
problem to a faulty bios on the motherboard. I updated this and her
computer was working very well. She decided to upgrade the computer some to
get rid of the MB that she no longer trusted. and I purchased an ASUS
p4s800d-x Socket 478 P4 MB for her along with two new sticks of Kingston
512MB DDR400 RAM. I installed everything and all seemed well except for
some timing issues between the new Kington RAM and the generic DDR400 RAM
she had before. This was fixed with a BIOS tweek for RAM timing on the
ASUS.

The years of trouble she had included hard locks and reboots on an almost
daily basis. After installing the new equipment she began to have reboots
when she left her computer on over night and running a virus check. This
would happen about once a week. It never locked or rebooted while she was
using the system.

I figured that the memory timing may have been the culprit for these new
errors and when we pulled her generic RAM the reboots stopped, but having
only 1GB of RAM and dealing with Photoshop she complained about the system
being slow.

I purchased some new matching Kingston RAM and installed this on ASUS. No
timing issues the board ran smooth and very fast.

She called and said that the computer had rebooted and she was now having a
blue screen error about Windows missing the user file. She had this happen
once before and that was fixed with a repair install of XP. Hopefully a
repair install will fix it again, but my questions are these:

Has anyone seen this issue before or dealt with this motherboard?
Is there a known issue with XP Home and 2GB of RAM?

Thank you,
Jon
 
D

DandyDon

I am currently running 2 gigs of RAM with XP Home with zero problems. Check
the following items. 1. Run Memtest overnight on each stick of RAM. 2. Try
tweaking the RAM voltage, It seems you have all four slots full; they may be
undervolted.
3. Try a bigger better power supply, the new board and RAM may be enough to
overwork the old one. RAM is twichy, it needs stable voltages. Based on your
post, the old one seems like it's been flaky for years.
4. Set the memory timings to Kingston spec rather than auto setting.
5. Verify RAM is compatible motherboard. I use Corsair because it works with
everybody, some RAM brands don't.
 
R

Rock

Hello,

I have a client that has been having problems with her machine for many
years now. She finally brought the computer to my shop and I diagnosed
the problem to a faulty bios on the motherboard. I updated this and her
computer was working very well. She decided to upgrade the computer some
to get rid of the MB that she no longer trusted. and I purchased an ASUS
p4s800d-x Socket 478 P4 MB for her along with two new sticks of Kingston
512MB DDR400 RAM. I installed everything and all seemed well except for
some timing issues between the new Kington RAM and the generic DDR400 RAM
she had before. This was fixed with a BIOS tweek for RAM timing on the
ASUS.

The years of trouble she had included hard locks and reboots on an almost
daily basis. After installing the new equipment she began to have reboots
when she left her computer on over night and running a virus check. This
would happen about once a week. It never locked or rebooted while she was
using the system.

I figured that the memory timing may have been the culprit for these new
errors and when we pulled her generic RAM the reboots stopped, but having
only 1GB of RAM and dealing with Photoshop she complained about the system
being slow.

I purchased some new matching Kingston RAM and installed this on ASUS. No
timing issues the board ran smooth and very fast.

She called and said that the computer had rebooted and she was now having
a blue screen error about Windows missing the user file. She had this
happen once before and that was fixed with a repair install of XP.
Hopefully a repair install will fix it again, but my questions are these:

Has anyone seen this issue before or dealt with this motherboard?
Is there a known issue with XP Home and 2GB of RAM?

Sorry I don't have any suggestions for your problem, but there are no
inherent problems with XP Home and 2GB of RAM. It's the same with XP Pro,
either can use up to 4GB.
 

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