PCA Forums

i'll start with the specs!

my system __________________________________________test system
althlon 1200 @1200 fsb 200______________________________PIII 700e
Asus A7V with current bios_______________________________Asus CUV4X ( i think)
IBM 40 Gig desktar 7200 RPM using UDMA 100 _____________Maxtor 15 GIG 7200 RPM using UDMA 66
Radeon 64 DDR VIVO ____________ _____________________ Voodoo 5 5500
(2 X 256) Ram PC133 (Micron on 3rd party board) ___________ (2 X 128) PC 133 (major brand)
WINDOWS XP PRO __________________________________WINDOWS 2000 SERVER

the problem i have is as follows: my computer will not work with my ram anymore!. if i try one of the two sticks i can't post at all. (it will beep with one of the sticks but doesn't post and the other does nothing. it doens't matter what slot they are in either. (with all unessary cards removed including HD and CD rom it doens't make a difference) However if i put both sticks in i can post but the computer will freeze while attempting to load windows xp or win 98 (dual boot). i was having many problems with stop errors in windows before this with my programs crashing and stuff like that. until finally i coudl no longert boot up! So i one woudl think the ram is bad. I borowed ram from a freind (test system) and his worked fine!! no matter what configurations i used. I'm still using his ram and it havent' hada problem yet.

However all is screwed up now that my 512 megs works perfectly in the test system. we tried all configurations and each stick seperatly to see if we could find a problem. it is workign perfect (friend likes the extra ram too!!!)

any idea what could be the problem? I was thinking somehtng to do with the mobo and how it sets up what ram will work and in what slot and what sizes. Before all this i was runnign fine for about 4 months with that ram, then all of a sudden i was having program crashes and stop errors.

I'm not sure I totally follow you.

Since you swapped ram with your friend everything is working fine, and your 2 sticks works fine in his computer?

Did you change ANYTHING in your BIOS settings before this happened? I get the feeling you may have changed your ram timing settings.

It IS possible that your ram is bad, but still works fine in his system. It could be that his ram timing settings are more conservative than yours so his system doesn't have a problem.

Are you overclocking?

You might try setting your RAM timing to the default settings in BIOS and see if your ram will work.

ANYTHING else change about the time you noticed this problem?

Your not trying to use ECC ram in a board that doesnt support ECC checking are you? I know it wont post if you try to install ECC ram in a non-ecc system.

i cooked off some ram one time swapping it around in the winter - i was pulling modules in and out of computers and ended up killing them with a jolt of static electricity because i wasn't grounded - never thought it could happen, but when i replaced the ram, everything was fine. rma'd the ram (corsair, i think) and that was the end of the story.

In winter ESPECIALLY you have to take static precautions when handling ram or CPUs.