Unable to boot computer with new RAM

Chris357

Hope you are making precautions for static electricity while you doing all this.

Hammyman

Chris357 wrote: »

Hope you are making precautions for static electricity while you doing all this.

TBH, thats been of no real significant consequence for the thick end of a decade. Its no longer the 1980's. CMOS devices are a lot tougher than they used to be.

prowla

it's also advisable to unplug the mains when inserting/removing memory (and with laptops take out the battery).

Mr_squishy

Hammyman wrote: »

Cheapo RAM or decent Crucial stuff?

Its Kingston Hyper blu. I went on the crucial website and this was one of the recomendations based on a scan of my computer although I bought it from somewhere else.

prowla - I will have another play about later today. not sure if i can have an odd number of sticks in as my Motherboard manual says I need pairs but I will try.

Tommyboi78 - I cant see why a hard drive setting would cause problems with the RAM, but I have checked BIOS and I have the latest update ( Still a few years old though).

ghandi

You may need to look at raising the memory voltage or even Northbridge voltage to get functionality/stability. Search online for info. When you try to use all 4 memory slots (on a 4 slot board) you generally need to start adjusting voltages in BIOS.

HTH

Mr_squishy

ghandi wrote: »

You may need to look at raising the memory voltage or even Northbridge voltage to get functionality/stability. Search online for info. When you try to use all 4 memory slots (on a 4 slot board) you generally need to start adjusting voltages in BIOS.

HTH

Thanks Ghandi, that seems to have done the trick it now boots with the 4GB, but Windows is showing that only 3 is usable. I bought the 64bit version of Windows 7 so I could have more RAM.

Is there a reason why it is saying this?

spud17

Mr_squishy wrote: »

Thanks Ghandi, that seems to have done the trick it now boots with the 4GB, but Windows is showing that only 3 is usable. I bought the 64bit version of Windows 7 so I could have more RAM.

Is there a reason why it is saying this?

Press Flying Widows+Pause/Break does it say 64 bit?

I'm not sure about all the upgrade paths, but was your original OS 64bit?

davb

Mr_squishy wrote: »

Thanks Ghandi, that seems to have done the trick it now boots with the 4GB, but Windows is showing that only 3 is usable. I bought the 64bit version of Windows 7 so I could have more RAM.

Is there a reason why it is saying this?

This is a BIOS setting (or limitation) defaulting for 32 bit OS, and can be turned off on some systems by tweaking the memory mapping options in BIOS.
The 1GB you are losing varies from system to system, but you only lose it once - so if you had 8GB installed, you would see 7GB in windows.

prowla

ghandi wrote: »

You may need to look at raising the memory voltage or even Northbridge voltage to get functionality/stability. Search online for info. When you try to use all 4 memory slots (on a 4 slot board) you generally need to start adjusting voltages in BIOS.

HTH

Mr_squishy wrote: »

Thanks Ghandi, that seems to have done the trick it now boots with the 4GB, but Windows is showing that only 3 is usable. I bought the 64bit version of Windows 7 so I could have more RAM.

Is there a reason why it is saying this?

That's a good tip - I'll try and park that one in memory for if/when the situation arises another time!