RAM upgrade issues (Dell Insprion 8600)

I attempted to upgrade the RAM on my DELL Inspiron 8600; 1.4 Ghz with 256 MB RAM from the factory. I read in one of these threads on here that what I need would be PC 2700 333mhz SODIMM 200pin. I bought a 1 GB APIDA stick that is PC2700 333mhz and here is what I get. When I first put it in, the machine would boot, recognize the memory upgrade, but dump when it got to windows. I pulled the 256mb stick out, thinking a possible RAM conflict to be the cause, and the machine booted, let me log on but crashed at Windows with the error message "IRQL not less or equal". I pulled the new stick out, and replaced the old one and it boots like it did previously. Problem seems to be the new stick.........What are your thoughts? Is PC 2700 333mhz the correct SODIMM stick, or is there something else I'm missing?

 

IRQL not less or equal...

Sounds like the memory has a physical problem.

Also, what is the maximum supported RAM for that notebook (2GB?). If 2GB, then a 1GB chip is fine in a single slot. But no slot should have more than 1/2 of the max supported RAM. If you 'violated' this spec the laptop would probably not even boot so you probably won't care.

But anyway, the memory is bad. RMA it after you run a MemTest86 test to verify the memory is bad.

 

The max on the machine is 2 GB. I'm fairly new to notebooks. How do you conduct a MemTest 86 exactly.