Laptop RAM help :(

Jubi

Ok so i have an IBM laptop that uses a PC100 as its original Ram stick and so i wanted to upgrade it cause i only have 128MB and running windows XP (Yep know its funny cause 256 is the minimum for XP lol.) And so i put this ram in with the old one i had, I start it up and a beep from the post confirming the ram is ok and it shows the full amount, then the windows XP screen pops up to load and all of a sudden a blue screen comes up with some error problem about physical memory with a long number like this (just an example)- (000X456688584584) and then shuts down to restart again. So i try it another way by just using the new ram i got in the slot, i start up the laptop the ram count comes up and it shows the right number but then instead of a beep it does this weird sound like the speakers went bad and then the screen just stays there and windows doesnt load.

Does anyone know what can i do to fix this or whats goin on.

Webmaster

A possible reason for crashing is that you use hibernation on the system and instead of shutting down completely you hibernated and added the memory. Because the hiber sys file is smaller than the actual installed ram it crashes. It happened to me a couple of times. If that is the cause you should have received an extra option (to discard the hybernation info) when restarting again with. Did you try to restart with both ram sticks installed? Can you start Windows with only the 'old' ram? If that's the case you may have bought bad memory and need to return it.

Jubi

Webmaster wrote:

A possible reason for crashing is that you use hibernation on the system and instead of shutting down completely you hibernated and added the memory. Because the hiber sys file is smaller than the actual installed ram it crashes. It happened to me a couple of times. If that is the cause you should have received an extra option (to discard the hybernation info) when restarting again with. Did you try to restart with both ram sticks installed? Can you start Windows with only the 'old' ram? If that's the case you may have bought bad memory and need to return it.

Ya i think you hit it right on the head, but i also thought if it were bad ram it wouldnt even show up on the ram count, but i guess there are other ways to find out that it is a bad ram. Thanks for your help

RussS

Not bad RAM - probably mismatched RAM.

Jubi

RussS wrote:

Not bad RAM - probably mismatched RAM.

Ya i just also noticed that, cause the old ram didnt say SDRAM or anything while the new one i brought had SD on it, so ya it is probably a mismatch