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I got a friend who is running an AthlonXP 1600+ on an EPoX 8kHA+ motherboard. BIOS when you boot up only finds 128mb of his 256mb stick of DDR RAM. I've updated the BIOS and the RAM is in the correct DIMM slot. I can't think of what else it might be? Any replies quickly would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, BTW, windows only sees 128mb RAM as well. What I find wierd is it's just a single 256mb stick yet it's only seeing half?

Are you REALLY sure he has 256mb? Maybe he got ripped.

Try different slots?

Positive it's 256. He bought it from Newegg. It's a crucial stick and it says 256mb on the stick.

Blade - Doesn't RAM have to go into specific slots (starting from 0)? I guess I'll try another slot, can't hurt.

Doesn't matter, only does if you have various sizes of ram.

The only time you have to put memory in the first slot is if the mobo has onboard video, otherwise you can put it in any slot (although I personally prefer to start with the first and fill it up from there).

Unless you have a bad stick, it has to be incompatible with the mobo. Unusual with a modern mobo and modern memory though. That's a common problem with older mobos. Old Intel LX chipset mobos for instance often won't properly recognize the full size of modern memory.

Worse comes to worse I'd go to Crucial.com and use their database to look up and order the exact memory that's compatible with that mobo.

Well, I tried the RAM in all other slots and it still only reports 128mb. I can't remember if it recognized 256 when I originally installed it or not? I assume it did or else I would have noticed it, but perhaps not. We're going to try my RAM (crucial still but it's PC2400) Eitherway it can't hurt to try...

further to that disscussion i had a asus p34 vx a while ago and when i cranked up the bus speed it would only report half the available ram .
Took me bloody ages to discover what was going on .
When the bus speed went back to normal lo and behold all the memory would come back

Well I put my RAM in my friends machine and it worked great (keep in mind both of these ram sticks are crucial, only mine is PC2400 compared to his PC2100). When I put his ram in my machine it reported the correct amount but when it went to start Win2k it would say "server.exe" couldn't be ran or some crap and would make you restart.

My guess? His ram is FUBAR'ed. Doesn't make much sense it would be just out of the blue though :-/ I'll do as you suggested Grumpy and try to knock down the bus speed (which would <i>underclock</i> it?) but I doubt it will help much. Thanks for all the quick and speedy replies guys, I owe ya one

[edit]
Just so ya guys know, I bumped the bus speed from 133MHz to 100MHz and now it finds all 256mb of RAM. However, we are still having problems when windows boots. He's running 98SE and it gives an error saying, "Windows encounted an error accessing the system registry. Windows needs to restart to fix the registry." Something along those lines...... So now we put it back to 133MHz and it only shows 128mb though it atleast boots into windows.

wow... damned if you do... damed if you don't...
time for some RMA action

try then one at a time

me

VooDoo - There is only a single stick here.

chottoED - I thought about RMA'ing it but I don't know if they'll take it. What do I say? It works in some motherboards, not in otheres? Hrm..... Can't hurt to try, I suppose.

try your ram in his box

me

I have.

now try his ram in your box

me