The disappearing Ram ???

mjenn5

Hello

I am hoping that somebody on here might know what is happening here.

I have an oldish PC that only had 192 mb ram memory but was working ok with that until about a week ago..

It started going slower so using Belarc I checked the ram.

It told me that the 2 cards were there but only 128mb ram was working.

Now the machine is even slower so I checked again and its down to 64mb.

I tried the cards sperately to see what happened.

If I leave in just the 64mb ram card it tells me I have 64mb ram.

If I take that out and put in the 128mb ram card it still only has 64mb ram.

I't can't be a faulty ram card because with the 2 together it is still only totaling 64mb ram.

??

I am at a loss.

Please help me.

simsun

A few more details on the spec of your machine would help give this problem a context. Does anyone else use the machine? If so do they know how to alter the Bios.

It sounds like the 128mb stick has developed a fault. Is it the same brand of memory? I have had a problem in the past with 2 differing brands of memory having a conflict.

Do you have a seperate graphics card or is it built into the motherboard? The latter will decrease your ram as it will need to share the memory between the graphics and the processor.

Sorry I can't be any more help.

cheers
simsun

mjenn5

Hi

It's a Gateway g6 233 running with XP Home edition. Nobody using it knows anything about altering the Bios. The 2 memory moduyles are from different manufacturers.

I thought the 128 mb was faulty until I tried it on its own and then the 2 together.

The pc does have a seperate graphics card.

John_Gray

If you know how to boot from a floppy disk you could download Microsoft Memory Diagnostic (no 's'!) and install it on a newly-formatted floppy, and boot from it. Set it up to run all night (or until you get an error, which may be quicker!).

It is also possible to burn it to a CD and boot from that. Whichever way you prefer!

John

mjenn5

Hi.

Thanks for that.

I ran the Memory diagnositc program all night and it came up without errors.

HMM

John_Gray

On that basis you don't have a memory problem, then!!

But did the diagnostics say how much memory was being checked? I would try running with just the 64 MB in slot A, then in slot B, then just the 128 MB in slot A, then in slot B, (that is, four separate tests) checking each time how much memory was seen.

Hopefully you shouldn't need to do all the variations with both chips inserted...

John

mjenn5

Hi

I have tried the various diagnostic tests on all of the memory card seperately and still can find no reason for it happening.

The error message I get as the computer boots up is

Error 8100 memory is being reduced.

Press Esc to continue or F1 to enter setup

I have done a bios upgrade just incase but the problem still persists.

If there are any other ideas I would love to hear them.

gr33ny_2

Do you know the motherboard make/model?

It could be that the motherboard will only recognise X amount of RAM which is why 128Mb shows as 64Mb.

mjenn5

I will check for the motherboard make/model number again.

I have bought 2 32mb ram memory to put in and they are showing up so it just seams to be the 128 ram that is causing the problem.