50% ram loss

What does it mean when your motherboard is only reading half your ram?

I purchased a 512 mb ram stick of PC133 SDRAM, 3.3v. (I just purchased one stick because I believe somewhere I read that Win98se can only utilize 512 mb of ram.) I removed my 256 and 128 stick and inserted the 512 stick in "DIMM1." The machine only recognized 256 mb of ram.

The specs on the 512 stick are the exact specs required according to my mboard manual. The mboard has two 168-pin dimm slots, and is potentialed to 1 gig of ram memory. The only way to reach 1 gig on two memory slots would be with a combination of two 512 sticks, right? So a 512 may max the slot, but the mboard should recognize it.

I tried other configurations of memory, solo and in combination, and just got a series of weird beeps on post, and/or safemode with fatal exceptions.

There is one thing that may be significant here: in the manual specs it says 512 x 2 = 1 gig. Does this mean I MUST have a matching pair of 512 sticks to work? even if I don’t want a full gig? I have put my un-matched 256 and 128 back in my machine and it is working fine. Just a little puzzled here. Any thoughts?

Thanks

- maureen

 

There is high-density and low-density RAM. High-density RAM has fewer chips on a stick. My guess is you are using high-density RAM, probably two chips per stick, and your board is designed for low-dendity RAM, eight or more chips per stick.

 

Hi Alex.
Interesting "“ in other words, if the system is using low density slots it would not be able to read a high density stick or vice versa? here is my configuration: 64x64-133, OEM 16 CH, 512MB. Question #1: There are, in fact, 16 chips on the stick "“ 8 on each side back-to-back; this would make it low density if I understand you correctly? Question #2, what indicator, if any, in this configuration "64x64-133 OEM 16 chip 512mb" distinguishes High or Low density?

I did a quick google search and didn’t find much to describe the difference between high and low RAM density, or even a comparison of the two with regard to speed, fault tolerance and any other relevant factors. Sounds like some of the issues with older memory modules like ECC and parity.

As a follow-up on this post, I had emailed Tech Support at the manufacturer of the machine about the same time as I posted my thread here. They replied that I should only use top quality memory, and suggested four brand names. I was told that they had tested the model with one Corsair 512 mb memory stick, and it was properly recognized by their machine as 512 mb.

Thanks for the good info, Alex "“ I didn’t know there were high and low density ram configurations. As usual, I learn more from the people on this board about product problems than from the techs who support the product. If you have a good resource you can offer where I can learn more about this, I’d appreciate a link or two. Your input has been much appreciated… cheers

-maureen

 

Frankly, I don't know much about high- and low-density, except from experience. Most systems will read either. When you see a 16-chip memory stick, you know it is low-density. When you see a two-chip memory stick, you know it is high-density. There is simply more memory packed into fewer chips and that is why they call it high-density.

Yours, obviously, are all low-density if they have 16 chips.

You are now down to a compatibility issue. I have run into it before and nothing short of compatible chips will fix the problem, in my experience. I had to return eight RAM chips about two months ago for the same reason. I had five machines here at the time and it was recognized at 50% in all but one of them.

 

Hi you three
I dont know anything about high and low density ram ,that may be the case.

But for instance my pc hp (arrrrgg) came with pc 100 and although the mb documention says it can use pc133 so becouse of the chipset used you have to stick with what the pc maker recomends
Or put the highest amount of origial ram in slot 1 place the chip you just bought in the next slot.
see what windows reports then ?
Their are fix's for larger amounts than 512 if the os has problems with it.

Lon

 

Hi Alex and Lon "“

Yeah, Lon, I knew to put the 512 in the first slot. When it only read at 50%, I tried the 512 again in the first slot in combination with other memory denominations, and then I tried reversing things by putting the 512 in the second slot solo and combo. When the 512 wasn’t in the first slot alone, the machine didn’t recognize anything, it never even completed a boot and windows totally freaked "“ so you are quite right there.

But you make an interesting point: It may indeed have to do with the limitations of the board’s chipset, mine is a VIA "“ I bet Intel is the standard for memory mfrs. But I’m not wanting to make a research project out of it, I just hoping to pick up a little understanding about this failure.

Alex, this is not the first time I’ve run into a situation where the mboard read only half the ram either "“ but before, I was dealing with an old board and I didn’t have any of the mboard specs. From your experience with the 5 machines, looks like the memory stick was the culprit "“ only 1 out of 5 recognized it.

I was kind of hoping that all I had to do to fix the problem was go up to 1 gig (512 x 2) since I plan to put XP on this machine next week. One gig would not have been wasted there. So far it doesn’t look like I’m going to have to deal with any OS fixes for memory over 512, Lon.

If anybody else knows more about this compatibility issue here, jump in. I think it’s safe to say we’d all like to know more about the whys of what's going on…

Thanks guys. Be safe tonight.

-maureen

 

Hello maureen

so what did the pc do with original ram in first slot and the big chunk in slot two
Sounds like you know about the backwards copatability issue

???

Lon

 

Hey folks

I don't know if this has anything to do with it or not.

For some reason my box started saying I had 256 although I have 512 on one stick installed. I tried many things but what worked was restoration of a Ghost image.

It happened again about two weeks later. This time it said 384 Megs. I again restored using my Ghost image.

I have no idea why this happened. Something must have become unglued in my software but who knows what. I tried SFC which reported everything was OK.

 

Hi Lon.

It gave me a device protection error: fatal exception OD at 0376:00002F1D. BSofDeath. Had to reinstall original ram and then get scolded by W98 for shutting down improperly. But it did boot back up with the original ram in slot 1 & 2. With other combinations of memory, I also got the DOS screen that gives you choices for Safe Mode or command prompt, etc., but could never even get into safe mode.

Bill, if you successfully restored recognition of your memory capacity by ghosting back your HD, sounds a lot more like a software problem than hardware. Man, this is getting wierd.

anyone else?

 

Maureen

D/L and run this! requires no install so create a folder in Program Files and call it CpuZ ?

Tells about cpu memory bus speed motherboard memory (speed and type) plus other things.

http://www.utilitygeek.com/details.php?fileid=149

May help or only confirm. All is good to know!

Mike

 

Mike "“ I downloaded & ran the utility. Here are the results, I just copied the main stuff "“ didn’t bother with things like family/model, core stepping, etc. In addition this little program offers to generate reports on PCI devices, spd dump, SMBus configuration and cpuID output "“ these are all notepad txt files with Hex notation stuff that is way over my head. I didn't include any of that here, but if it is meaningful to you, I'll post back what you need.

Here are the main specs from the CPU-Z utility on my working system. Don’t know if this will mean anything to you, doesn't mean a lot to me:

CPU= Intel Celeron; CPU Clock = 1102.5 MHz; Multiplier "“ 11.0; FSB speed and frequency both = 100.2 MHz; L1 Data Cache & L1 instruction cache both = 16Kb 4-way set associative 32b line size; L2 cache "“ 256Kb 8-way set associative 32b line size; L2 speed = 1102.5 MHz, 370 FC-GPA2; L2 ECC check enabled; L2 Bus Width = 256b. Chipset = VIA 601 rev 5, southbridge = VT82C686 rev. 40; Sensor chip = 686A/B. Memory Modules = SDRAM PC133 "“128 mb at module 0; Infineon SDRAM PC133 "“ 256 mb at module 1. Win98se.

If there is a clue in here let us know, okay?

Tks. - maureen

 

Maureen

In your case (memory problem) you should look at the memory only.

Look at the modules info on the memory you had originally. Then put in the new memory and recheck then compare to your memory to the new. What is the comparison.

This may give info you can use to get the correct memory.

Mike

 

Hi Mike. Thanks for the suggestion, however, right now I can’t afford to have my computer down, I’m in the middle of another PC and I need mine to download drivers, etc.

When I can afford the time to be down, I’ll take mine back apart and compare modules, but no matter what differences I may find, frankly it looks like I simply have memory that for some reason is not compatible here.

Guess the mystery will remain. for a while at least. O well.

cheers .....

-maureen

 

I understand.

I've seen this done!

If you have a friend or access to another computer similar to yours with 512 you may could swap and both will work. Some motherboard BIOS combos will use almost anything that will fit.

Mike

 

Howdy

An easy way to compair documentation
from what you bought to what you should have is to go to crucial.com and go through the process like you buying new memory----but this will only work for stock systems.

also did you try the new mem by itself ?
usually if trying to use more thean 512 you'l get out of memory messages but often with just 512 even.
certian beep codes though mean incopatible memory ..
depends on make of pc..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
" "There is not enough memory available to run this program.
Quit one or more programs, and then try again.
The computer may stop responding (hang) while Windows is starting, or halt and display the following error message:
Insufficient memory to initialize windows. Quit one or more memory-resident programs or remove unnecessary utilities from your Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files, and restart your computer.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;253912
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
win 98
http://support.microsoft.com/common...&LL=kbwin98search or kbwin98sesearch&Sz=hwmem
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Windows Me Memory/RAM Articles
http://support.microsoft.com/common...Memory/RAM Articles&LL=kbwinmesearch&Sz=hwmem

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
PS you never said what os or computer make.
BYE Lon