[Pc_Support] PC locking up after installing new memory

[George Laiacona]

Probably the only thing left to try is get a recommendation for RAM from the manufacturer, whether that be the PC maker or Motherboard manufacturer. Sometimes, in my experience, the RAM manufacturer and PC Maker differ on their opinion of what RAM to use. More often than not, the memory will cost more (go figure) from the PC Maker, but it will work.

Sometimes you get shipped a bad stick. Has happened to me several times, though considering just how much RAM has passed through my hands that's a very rare occurrance.

There's a really, really small chance, however, that something else failed, such as a HDD is going bad, that just happens to coincide with your RAM upgrade. Again, a very tiny possibility, but there.



George A. Laiacona III
Systems Manager
Aiken County Government
803 642 1594

>>> dmckenna at thelimucompany.com 12/08/05 12:11 PM >>>
Here's the story.  Have a HP 1.3ghz Celery PC running Windows XP Home
(SP2) that had 128mb of RAM in it.  I installed 2x 256mb PC133 sticks in
place of the one 128mb stick (unsure what speed) and since then it
randomly locks up.  It's a lightly used machine, nothing more than AOL 9
and MSWord (with Symantec Corporate Antivirus 8 in the background) so it
isn't like the system is overheating from playing Quake42.

The problem is that three times in the past three days it has just
halted - the mouse freezes and within a moment the screen goes black.
One time it halted when the owner was in MSWord, the other two times in
AOL writing an email.

Apparently the PC is only compatible with certain types of 256mb strips,
two sided ones that have lower capacity chips, so we made certain to
order the type that the memory manufacturer said were compatible
(Corsair CMSS256MB-133), but obviously this may still be the problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could try?  I'm going over
later to do a MemTest86 test on it, I'll see if it can uncover anything.

Thanks.

-- 
Damien McKenna - Web Developer - Damien.McKenna at thelimucompany.com 
The Limu Company - http://www.thelimucompany.com/ - 407-804-1014
#include <stdjoke.h>

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