Question For The Computer Whiz's......

[Hammer]

I have rebuilt a not too old P4 1. 9g system which is using Windows XP Home. It has 2 hard drives,the main is a Western Digital 120g and the storage is a Western Digital 200g. It has a MSI MX4000 video card and has 2 1g ram sticks installed.



The problem I am having with it has me lost and unsure what to look for. When you boot the system it will run through its tests and boot sequence and the Ram check then load. The problem is when it goes through this it does not recognize all the RAM and comes up short with it and slows the system greatly. HOWEVER,you restart the system and ALL of the RAM runs and when you check after it all loads it shows all of it in perfect working order.



I have went through the BIOS and made sure the RAM is set to automatic selection for clock speed and when your in the bios it shows all of the RAM also. Leave that area,boot the system and it will only show a partial RAM available. I am lost,but,with these things it doesn't take much and any help is appreciated. The system is the one my Daughter uses when she is here so I can keep her off of mine. I am at a loss and all I did was add more RAM(went from 256mb to 2g of DDR)... ... ... . Andy

 

[rkressg]

What brand of Memory (could you give a Mfg/Part#)?
Depending on the Motherboard, not all RAM is compatible.

I would pull and re-seat the memory. If it is sometimes working, then others not, you probably have a bad chip.

I would download MemTest 86 (Memtest86.com - Memory Diagnostic) and run it. If you have bad memory, it will show you where it is bad. I would run it on one chip at a time (pull out one chip, then boot it up and test); then repeat for the other chip.

This program runs on its own bootable OS. You will need to make either a bootable floopy or bootable CD. Their webpage has all the instructions.

If the PC does not detect the memory during POST (Power On Self Test), I do not believe the undetected memory will be available to the OS. With less memory available to the OS (physical RAM), the OS will begin to use more of the pagefile (virtual memory), potentially causing a slowdown.

If the OS is using the bad memory, and the data is not being properly refreshed, causing bad storage, programs could be seeing errors, causing additional bad performance.

One other thing, if it is an option in the BIOS, you can try to slow down the selection speed of the memory (for all chips) from auto to a slower choice.