A cautionary tale - adding RAM

This is just an activity report, not a question. What happened was a big surprise and I can maybe help others to avoid it.

My system had a single 512MB RAM stick and an adjacent empty slot. Since I was having fairly frequent message about insufficient RAM, I decided to remove the 512 stick and install a pair of 1GB sticks. I used Crucial's scaneer and it identified two different sticks, PC2700 and PC3200. Since I wasn't staying with the PC2700/512MB stick, I bought the 3200 sticks.

I opened the case, wore grounding straps and was very careful removing the old stick and installin the two new ones. Fired up the box and was greeted by total chaos. There were random strings of letters and colored rectangles all over the screen. Windows refused to boot.

Back to the original memory stick and it was the same. I opened the case while the computer was running and could hear the small fan on a recently installed AGP card making weird noises. I powered down, took that card out and hooked up the monitor to the IGP video on the mother board, even though it's known to produce a poor quality picture.

It booted up OK (still on the single 512MB memory), but I found a lot of Windows functions were not working properly. Example - task manager didn't have the usual blue frame around it and all the function keys were missing. Forunately, I was able to get a good back-up, since my last one was 8 weeks earlier.

I decided to change the memory to the 2GB set-up and restore Windows. Of course this blew all the program files away and I had to re-install all the software.

I am now up and running with the 2GB memory, a fresh load of WinXP, newly installed MS Office, printer, Google Earth, Adobe Reader and Quicken. Still to get organized with a photo processor.

The bottom line is that installing additional memory isn't a simple task. About 20 hours of banging my head against the wall and a trip to a local computer store to get the memory sticks checked out. I haven't tried the AGP card again. I might take that to the computer guru to be checked out, just in case its failing was the root cause of the problem.

Apologies for a long story, but it may save someone else from the grief.

 

Ditto.

In fact, I just upgraded two Lenovo desktops from 4 to 8GB this morning. Took maybe 5 minutes each . . . and that includes booting them up and viewing the [Winkey+Pause/Break] to make sure Windows recognized the upgrade.

 

Hi Frank.

I have to agree with the others here. I've done more memory upgrades that I can remember. I've never worn a grounding strap and I've never had a problem that wasn't down to getting the wrong memory stick in the first place. Its a job I do now without thinking about it.

I had a PC in last week that I'd been working on earlier in the week doing windows upgrades and had mysteriously stopped working after I'd finished with it. It turned out to be one of the existing memory sticks that had blown. As it happened, I hadn't opened the case when I was working on it previously so I know it wasn't anything I'd done that had caused the stick to fail. It was just simply coincidence. Maybe it was the same for you.....

 

Actually, Don, it's up and running with the two Crucial 1GB sticks installed. Windows got so corrupted, I had to do a restore. I'm back on the IGP for now, as I don't trust the AGP card, even though it's an Nvidia GeFORCE and I only got it in early April.

Unfortunately, the SATA back-up box I us for regular back-ups got dinged during the long two weeks I've been fighting this battle. I'll have to fix or replace it before I dare try the AGP board, as I don't have any back-up capability right now.

 

Hi , if the new video card fan was making a strange sound , I was wondering whether you checked the fan area for an object caught between the fan and grill like a tiny piece of paper or did you check to ensure the fan is not fouling upon the grill , that may have been dented during manufacture

 

Yes, Tiger, I did. The fan has plastic blades and on this particular design there's no mesh grill. The motor does have a very "notchy" feel when you turn it by hand, but I think that's a function of where the magnets are in the motor case. There's no obvious binding.

I think the odd noise was fan spped variation because of some other issue affecting the power to the board. I'm going to stop by my local computer whiz store in a day or two and have them take a look at the board. They correctly identified that my two 1GB memory sticks were fine.

 

same thing happened to me couple of times... This is specially true with old motherboards. There was instance that I had to replace the motherboard just because I want to have higher RAM. So if it is old, I rather get a new set.

 

Grounding straps are great - AS LONG AS the other end of the strap is properly grounded, and the strap itself if not damaged.

Experienced dinkers habitually touch bare metal of the case interior before reaching in to discharge static but there is nothing wrong with using a good and properly attached strap. Many professional manufacturing, assembly and repair facilities require them.

However, one thing I did not see you do is unplug the power supply from the wall BEFORE removing or installing RAM. The ATX Form Factor standard calls for all ATX Power Supplies to deliver +5Vsb standby voltage to many points across the motherboard whenever the computer is plugged in, but NOT powered on. This is to support the many "Wake on..." commands current motherboards provide. Wiggling the mouse or pressing a key on the keyboard to wake the computer out of sleep mode are two examples of "Wake on..." commands.

If you do not remove that +5VDC before removing or installing RAM, the RAM modules may easily be damaged. This is a classic mistake too often made.

The ONLY exception to unplugging the PSU is if your power supply has a master power switch on back, you can set that to off. Many PSUs have such a switch, but many do not. The ATX Form Factor standard for PSUs does not require one. That said, those switches are 5-cent parts, so unplugging is always a safe bet.

 

Hi Frank, I've just boosted the wife's comp from 1.5GB RAM to 3GB. After installation, I did the old > Right click My Computer > Properties to see if the 3Gigs were shown.
Only 2Gigs showed up for work. Shut down > Pull AC plug (as usual) and wiggled the RAM sticks to ensure good contact. Plug in and Boot > 3Gigs are now happily at work.
Connections in slots may have needed a clean. FWIW. Cheers Neil.

 

Jaydee:

I'd almost go to the point of springing for a new high-performance lap-top, but the current retiree budget on Soc Sec wouldn't allow doing it. I've got back to a reasonable level of performance and will live with it a while longer.

 

Hi , might be an idea to check your power supply unit , they downgrade over time and your computer is already retro-age - adding more banks of memory may have been just enough when the psu is under very high load during booting to induce errors
PSU voltage output testers are quite low cost
Also you can check for some types of memory errors by running memtest 86 created onto a bootable optical disk - does not use Windows, so can isolate Windows as the problem (although not 100%)
however seems most likely that you selected incompatible module models - possibly an unsupported chip organization issue (commonly described so called sided , single vs double), not all computers support both
I suggest consult wiki if interested in a clear description

 

I did unplug all the cords before I started, Bill, so that wouldn't have been an issue. Everything except the AGP card is running fine and operations are considerably quicker than with the single 512M stick.

I restored Windows and have got all the capabilities back except my photo processing. I had an old Paintshop Pro (version 4, I think) and can't find the original installation disk. I guess I'll either pick up MS Picture It, which I think is on my Office 03 disk, or spring for current version of Paintshop.

 

Paint Shop Pro 4.12 (2.9 MB)

Note: I tend to doubt that a program that old (1996[?]) will run on 64-bit version of Windows.

 

Doc:

I unearthed Microsoft Picture It! 9, which was lurking in the undergrowth. Maybe it was bundled with either my Fuji camera's software or with MSOffice.

It works a bit differently than Paintshop Pro, but the price was right. I'll have a bit of a learning curve with it, but most of what I do with photos is change them to 6" x 4" size and change the resolution.

With a new grand-daughter (born last Nov) in Tokyo, DW was getting a bit antsy about me not being able to keep her brag-book up to date!

 

Know what you mean.