Need help, installed new ram. nearly crashed comp.

Ive got an Acer 3003WLCi. This morning i picked up a Centon 1GB DDR400 PC3200 200pin Chip. The person at Compusa said it was what i needed. I went home and installed it making sure i had no static electricity to discharge on the laptop by mistake.

Once installed i started up the notebook it ran scandisk and then once it came to my login screen, the computer would quickly flash a blue screen with some code on it...so quick i couldnt make out what it said.

I then switched out the 1GB for my 256mb and started the computer again. It ran ok and a error screen came up showing that windows had recovered from a critical error(obviously the 1GB ram)

Also my AOL and anti-virus died. I had to uninstall and reinstall them just so they would work.

Wrong ram or ??

 

Try another RAM, sometimes bad memory is the cause of these BSOD's. The type of RAM you bought should work although DDR333 might be(in some cases) better as Acer uses DDR333 memory stock. Also a better brand like Crucial, Kingston will be more reliable than Centon.

 

Interesting, The centon was extremely expensive...guess i didnt get what i paid for. The kingstong was like 99-120. while i paid almost 200 bucks for the Centon.


I suppose its my own fault, i should have suspected something when i saw that the box had been previously cut open

Is it normal for programs lke my AOL and Norton to die during a BSOD??

 

Programs files can get corrupted in cases of blue screens, so it is not uncommon for it to happen.

Centon arent really well known, but I think Compausa might have some sort of exclusive arrangement with Centon as their memory is frquently sold at their stores. So maybe its no wonder that the salesman was trying to sell you that.

 

Build an ultimate boot disk (ultimatebootcd.com) which has Memtest86 built in. This will tell you simply if there is a defect with the memory you bought or the operating system as it boots off the CD and is OS independent. I discovered my early BSODs after a person suggested just that. I spent HOURS running diagnostics and reinstallations which kept crashing before that.