Quick Help Please! Computer Posts With 3gb Of Ram In But Not 4gb!

[dude_56013]

Pretty self explanatory...I ordered 2 x 1 gb of the same patriot ram that i have installed now so that I would have a total of 4gb..my specs are in my sig..i have windows xp 32bit professional corporate ed. I just got my ram today, but when i turn my comp on, it just goes to a screen that says what my video card is...top left it says X1950XT PCIE...and that's it..it won't go to the mobo splash screen to access bios or boot xp it just sits there..i've tried it with just 3 gb of ram ( 1 of the new sticks ) and it does boot, and i have tried each of the ram individually like that so i know neither of the new ram are bad! So basically am I stuck using only 3 gb of RAM then?...

if i'm stuck with just 3 gb total that's ok..i only pd. 40 bucks the ram and i'll try and sell the other stick to one of my friends for 30 bucks or something..i just wanna make sure it's not something i'm doing wrong before i freak any more!! thanks amigos!

Zac

 

[sanka]

Might be a bad stick of RAM. See if you are able to run memtest (http://www.memtest.org/). Xp only recognizes about 4 and a half gigs of RAM, anyways, but that wouldn't stop it from booting.

 

[dude_56013]

yeah well see they both work individually..like if i use my 2 original 1 gig sticks plus either or the new ones, it boots, just both together is causing the no boot problamo..

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Does it just refuse to boot or does it make any beeps?

You could try putting all four modules in, the resetting the CMOS. There may be a timing issue that's keeping it from booting with all four.

 

[dude_56013]

they are identical sticks of ram, so i doubt it's a timing issue, in fact, that's the first thing i actually tried..i had it set at 4-4-4-12 manually (what they are rated) before i got the new ram...installed the new and it wouldn't boot so i set them all back to auto....still no go

at first when i had it at manual timings, it wouldn't beep at all and the cpu fan would keep spinning at full speed...then when i auto'd the timings, it beeped like it was going to go to the splash screen, but it just went to the sceen with the vid card stats as stated above... :-|

 

[_-..zKiLLA..-_]

32bit OS's only recognize 3gb of RAM

is it working now?

 

[dude_56013]

can anyone comment about something about changing a "3gb switch" in the boot.ini file?? that's all i've found on google so far...

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Make sure that it's set to T2 in the memory timings.

 

[dude_56013]

not a ram error i dont think..ran mem test on the first stick (plus original 2) for 45 minutes, 38 percent complete with no errors....

atomic rooster...what are T2 memory timings? is that just the command clock, or something else?

 

[Atomic Rooster]

It's the CMD (command rate) timing. If it's set to T1, it more than likely wont boot with four sticks.