SDRAM Issue

In my windows computer i had 256MB ram split between the three slots i have (0, 1, and 2). The chips are 128MB, 64MB, and 64MMB. Now my friends uncle had a brand new 256MB PC133 ram chip he gave to me.

I took all the ram out, and didnt pay attention to the order it came out in. The motherboard apparently doesnt support 133 only 100 (its a few year old P3) and the 256MB chip had made it wacky.

So i removed the 256MB and put my 128MB in bank 0 and booted, it worked so i left it alone. Well time has come to put my two 64's in with the 128 again, so i put them into memory banks 1 and 2.

so its 128MB (0)
64MB (1)
64MB(2)

And startup the pc, after five blue bar passes from XP i get BSOD, so i reboot. BSOD again, its telling me it shutdown to prevent damage.

So i take the 64MB out of bank 2 and boot. Now it says that system32/NTFS is missing or corrupt. I take out the 64MB in bank 1 and now its just the 128 again and it boots fine.....I just did ALOT of half life intsalling i dont wanna wipe if i dont have too, so, any ideas?

Sounds like you ESD'd your RAM somehow. I've had that same thing happen to me with a bad 256MB DDR chip. I doubt it will help, but you never know, check the contacts on the RAM and use compressed air to clean out the memory slots.

what ESD'd?

Im going to tru running it

64(0)
64(1)
128(2)

Quote:

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Originally posted by RoD
what ESD'd?

Im going to tru running it

64(0)
64(1)
128(2)

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ESD = Electro Static Discharge

Anything i can do for that or is that permanant....

Quote:

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Originally posted by RoD
Anything i can do for that or is that permanant....

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It's quite permanent. In this case you may have ESD'd your RAM through your own body if you handled it improperly, did not use proper safe-guards (IE: static strap), or maybe you set the RAM on a poorly-judged surface.

Your PC should have run that 133mhz RAM just fine. It would have just ran at 100 mhz since the board only has a 100 mhz bus. Have you tried to just put in each of the 64 in one at a time to see if one of them is hosed? What happened when you put in the 256?

Just for the record...I've handled just about every bit of hardware in a PC without any sort of static protection and haven't ever zapped any hardware. I've been doing this for about 3 years now.

i was wearing my anti static band...

well thats what i thought brink cuz i had a 256 PC133 in the past and it ran saying "100MHZ assumed" and worked awsome. It BSOD'd, crashed, didnt boot, etc when i put the 256mb i have now in there....

Have you tried to reset the extended system configuration data block? It shouldn't be necessary for a ram change but I *think* that I had the same problem some time ago and it worked.

I'm going to try some things today, i have to go pickup my new linux computer and fix that in about ten minutes. Last night i went to mess with ram and my hand slipped and seperated the processor from the heatsink (its slot one...ew) and i didnt/dont have glue so its kinda held on with duct tape lol.