Need Help! Aspire 5672WLMi. Memory issue? Vid memory? Argh!

Guys, i need some help. I'm not sure what is going on.

So here's the deal. I recently put in 2x 2gig sticks in my laptop. I ran memtest86 and it found no errors. I ran Primer95 for 11 hours. No errors.

However, since i have installed my new RAM I have had two issues. The first is with World of Warcraft. It crashes and says "insufficient system resources"..? (4 gigs of RAM isn't enough?). The last crash was actually a BSOD.

The second thing. My BIOS shows 128 MB of video RAM (is this normal?). I have an ATI X1600 with 512 (hypermemory).

My BIOS also shows 3GB of system RAM but that is because I am running XP with the /PAE flag. I am planning on eventually upgrading to vista.

The RAM I have is this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231135

I have pagefiles set to windows default.

Any help would really be appreciated. I have no idea what is going wrong. I am assuming my game might be crashing because of something with the video memory? The normal memory seems fine. Help!

 

Disable /PAE. It was known to have issues, and MS pulled most of PAE's functionality out a long time ago due to many system crashes when enabled.

Your X1600 is probably 128MB dedicated and 384MB shared RAM. BIOS will not reflect shared RAM, as that is controlled by OS drivers. There was a variant like that used by ATI and I'm guessing you have one of them.

Revert back to 2GB (just use one stick) and see if there is a problem. There might be a bug related to how much RAM is in the system, much like Vista not installing sometimes on systems with 4GB+ of RAM or XP not hibernating correctly when equipped with 3GB+ of RAM.

 

I will try to disable PAE and see how that goes. Then if I still have problems I will pull out a stick.

I'll report back.

 

OK, with PAE off. I still get "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service." This usually happens when the game is trying to load a bunch of entities (such as in a large city).

I am not even close to maxxing out my 4 gigs though. I will try to take out a stick later.

Weird observation, after the game crashes my catalyst control center tab disappears from my display properties -> settings -> advanced window. Probably unrelated and just due to the crash.

 

Could more heat generated from the extra RAM cause this?

 

You might be on to something here. Go to the GPU Guide and get the latest drivers. That might be part of the cause.

Not really. MemTest86+ heats the RAM up enough as it is, and heating would cause errors...not memory to disappear or be insufficient.

 

Ok, trying the new drivers now. I'm thinking this is more of an issue with the game and less and issue with my hardware or any type of harware compatibility.

 

Another update. This time when it crashed with the new catalyst drivers my screen popped to 800x600 resolution and looked as if I was in safe mode for a second, as if the video drivers were not loaded. Then it reset to normal.

Maybe my x1600 is overheating?

 

Ok, update.

I took out a stick of RAM and rolled back my vid drivers to the original ones. The system has run error free.

Looks like 4gigs, xp and a gpu with shared memory somehow don't jive. Anyone have an idea why?

 

Try mobiltily mod and get newest ati drivers they work great

 

Argh, I was running stable all day and got the crash. Only 1 stick in...

Any other ideas??