Fancy RAM

[shazbot423]

I have windows xp home and I got a 512mb chip of PC3200 DDR to replace my old SDR. The problem is, when I start my computer with the new RAM, windows won't load. Normally when it should start to load, the screen just goes blank.

 

[Ecniv]

Are you sure your motherboard accepts DDR? It does have to be native to the board.

 

[neb1211]

there might be a jumper that you have to set in order for the board to accept ddr. You might want to check into that.

 

[Martin]

May sound stupid, but be sure your motherboard is able to accept the PC3200 stick. There are motherboards out there which can only accept RAM of the specified speed rating (on the manufacturer's specifications).

 

[Shroud]

very true MicroBell.. certainly sounds like a RAM incompatability issue.

 

[shazbot423]

It worked when I had windows 98 installed. Then I installed xp and it wouldn't work

 

[Shroud]

You made it sound as if the extra RAM was bought at the same time as XP Home

 

[Shroud]

Thats what I was wondering..

 

[shazbot423]

Yes. My old stick works fine in windows xp. I was having troubles installing xp. It would hang up in certain points during the installation. After remembering that a technical support guy from ms had mentioned something about somebody having some "fancy ram" that was causing them trouble, I decided to try my SDRAM just for the install. It worked fine with the sd. Windows xp installed and it started up. Then I figured I'd switch back to my ddr ram because I thought it was only causing problems during setup, but windows xp won't even start with the ddr ram in. However, windows98 (when it was installed) started fine with the ddr.

 

[shazbot423]

I already had the DDR stick (even though I just got it, I had it before I got xp). My system was working fine with the ddr and windows 98.