New RAM, now XP won't work

Computer Forum CPU, Motherboards and Memory
1

Purchased 1GB (2x512) to install in my computer, replacing the 2700 with 3200. I already had 512MB of 3200, so now I have 1536MB. After swapping out the RAM, my BIOS recognizes it, and I can boot into XP, but it seems to hang up at that point. The icons never come up or the START bar at the bottom. Anyone else have this problem?

I tried going back to the original configuration, but it having the same problem. One thing I thought was strange, after swapping the RAM, XP wanted me to re-activate. I thought that was unusual for just changing the RAM out. CAS Latency on the 2 types is both 2.5 if that means anything.

Any ideas or has anyone else had this problem?? Help would be greatly appreciated.

(I had Crucial 2x256 @ DDR333 and PQI Turbo 2x256 DDR400 before the problem, swapped out the Crucial for 2x512 DDR400 Corsair Value RAM)

2

[google]Memtest[/google] is what I’d get and put on a floppy or CD and run it to see if there’s problems with the memory. The memory may not be bad, but you may need to manually adjust the CAS timing to 2.5 or 3 in BIOS. The other thing that comes to mind is that you’re using two different sizes of RAM 256MB and 512MB, and that might be screwing with the dual-channel memory function of that motherboard. In that case you’d need to use only the 256MB or 512MB modules.

3

Problem solved by running XP repair. Everything is working fine now. Thanks for the help.