512 ram only recognized as 256 ram?

[Unregistered]

recently i bought a stick of pc133 512 SDRAM and upon removing all of my old sticks and replacing them with this stick and booting up windows xp pro...windows only recognizes it as 256 ram..

im not sure what else i can do to solve this problem..can anybody help out?

 

[Rapmaster]

What motherboard do you have?

Some support modules of only 256mb (per module) at the most...

There isn't much to do in Windows-- Windows gets this information directly from the BIOS, which gets it by detecting it through... ummm electronic magic.

A BIOS update ("Flash") may be required. This can cause problems if it gets messed up though but sometimes its the only way.

 

[Unregistered]

thnx for the fast reply

umm i have a K7M Slot A Asus Motherboard
if theres any other things you needa know about my specs just ask

 

[Rapmaster]

That motherboard supports a total of 768MB of RAM and yep it looks like you can't put more than 256MB in each slot. I can't find a BIOS update that resolves this.

Incidentally, it only supports memory speeds up to PC100 so PC133 is somewhat wasted (although it will still work at the slower speed and the price almost the same)

Try to return the 512MB module for a couple of 256MB ones.

 

[Unregistered]

wow thnx again for the quick reply!

i have a few other questions though...i purchased this ram to replace my current sticks of 256 ram to see if it would stop causing a memory problem i've been having (warcraft3 crashes randomly giving me a "memory could not be read" error) - and i thought all my other ram was faulty..but apparently its something else or all the ram i've been using is incompatible somehow

what im thinking is..could a bios update fix this problem? what do ya think?

 

[Unregistered]

It has been my experience that random crashes are usually the result of:
Bad RAM (which is most likely ruled out in your case)
Crap video drivers (try either the latest, or try a few revisions back where you're not beta-testing the company's "newest release")
An overheating video card
An overheating cpu

For heat related issues, try running the game with your case off and see if the problem is solved, or if it prolongs your playing abilities. If it has, then you'll probably want to look at either getting better fans/heatsinks or getting a case fan.

Also note that reinstallation is a common technical support cure-all. If you have not tried reinstalling, you may want to give that a whirl as some data file might've been corrupted, resulting in a crash whenever someone creates a unit, or a specific sound is played, etc.

-- Magickian, because I'm too lazy to login

 

[Unregistered]

sorry to revive this dead topic again but after talkin to a few friends they suggested that i should get a new power supply (i've been thinking this all along)

the problem i have is that: i have a geforce4 4400, 2 hard drives, cd-rom, sound blaster live x-gamer, v.92 modem and all of this is running on a 200 watt power supply...

when i had went to a computer shop earlier about this they said my power supply was fine but that my software was probably messed up...

so anyways i would like to get your opinions on this...i really think its my power supply but others like to tell me otherwise

and also...if u feel it is my power supply..could u reference me to any good power supply companies...or any special bargains (i heard antec is supposed to be good)

 

[Wargasm]

when running an amd cpu go for a 300 watt .
200 with that vidcard is too low in my opinion

 

[Unregistered]

argh hate to keep reviving this same old topic...but i just wanted to update u all on my "progress"

anyways i ordered a ALLIED power supply from newegg.com and received it a few days ago to replace my old power supply (200 watts) with the allied one (350 watts)

well of the things i've noticed is that my games are somewhat smoother and as for the wc3 memory could not be read error...i just realized a few min ago that it *still* occurs

so it wasnt my power supply... but on the bright side..it seems as if the errors are occuring much less frequently..albeit they still occur

any more suggestions would be greatly apprepiated

 

[wakko]

Blizzard has some steps to "help" with this error.

http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=awr0649p

Try those and see if they help. There are 7 steps total.

 

[t'kron]

You can check out your memory by running goldmemory.

you can download it from here:

http://www.goldmemory.cz/download.htm

 

[Unregistered]

i have tried all of the steps listed on the bnet support page
i have also tried goldmember to try to test my ram...but it takes an absurdly long time..according to the website it says it should take around 9 hours or so to test 64 megs of ram...times than by 10 (i have around 768 ram) and so im guessin my computer will be on for 90+ hrs before the damn thing will be finished...im sorry i just dont feel like doin that and even if it finished - who knows if it detects anything? it could just say my ram is corrupted and do nothin else or say that it is fine

any more suggestions

 

[t'kron]

Gold memory continiously loops it's test, I test my 512 megs on my P3 933mhz system and it takes about 20 minutes. All you need to do is run a single test if no errors show up in the main window they you are ok if the progress bar turns red they you know you have bad ram. if you have bad ram it is best to test the sticks one at a time to see which are good and which are bad.

 

[Unregistered]

well i've already tried testing all of the ram sticks one by one and apparently every stick still causes the errors

 

[Unregistered]

Tried putting the RAM in a different slot? If the slot has a bad contact, that could be your answer.

 

[Neo_HoJo]

1) Have you made sure that the RAM is in the correct order (Greatest to least) and that the greatest variance of RAM on a stick is by a multiplier of 2? Also, with the ram Problem, test each stick individually, one might be errored, if it is, junk it- the computer might function without telling you there's an error if you've got at least one good stick in. Once you've made sure that you're using nothing but good memmory sticks, put them in one at a time, until one of them starts giving you problems. If it is the ram slot, I wouldn't know how to fix it, I would just junk the board though.
2) For the overheating problem, have you changed the processor recently? Sometimes you can blow up a processor if the bus's are wrong, or it's incompatable with the motherboard, you can get major overheating.
3) Again, with the overheating, try making a heat connection between the heat sink and your case to use it as extra sink material (STRONGLY NOT RECOMENDED)
4) Another thing about the heat, try using a high temp thermometer to check if it's your sound or video card, you might need to Sink/Fan one of these.