Bought RAM - Having issues.

I bought a 1GB stick of Corsair from Newegg.

Now, to set up the story.
On my old Desktop, I had gotten extra RAM, when I put it in, my system would act up and get a blue screen very often, a physical memory dump.


Now I have the new Dell E1705, bought another stick of 1gb, and have the stock 256mb stick.

My laptop has gotten that Physical Memory Dump screen 3 times in 2 days.. any ideas on what I can do to fix this?

 

either you are using to much memory or you have a virus or spyware, i had a similar problem all i did was reformat my pc and i havent seen that blue screen since

 

I have 1.256GB RAM in the system.

 

Try running memtest overnight. That should tell you if there is something wrong with your ram.

 

I'm sure you checked this before you bought, but be sure that it's the right speed.

I agree about running memtest. It could just be a bad stick, though having it happen a couple times is curious. Anything in particular you are doing when it BSODs?

 

call me old-school, but try running it without the 256MB stock stick. use only the 1GB stick in one of the slots. i seem to remember a similar problem years ago in a desktop. it was the matched-pairs thing. worth a shot before the reformat...

 

So you think its because of the mixing of two different types of RAM?

If i were to buy another stick of the same 1gb, it should be fine?

 

How do I run a memory test?

 

Download Memtest86...google to find it. You are going to have to put it on a floppy I believe and then boot to it.

 

DDR RAM (Double data rate) is a type of SDRAM (Synchronous dynamic random access memory) and you need equivalent SODIMMs in each slot for it to be 'dual channel/dynamic'. i'm just saying that the mis-matched pairs could be giving you the issue. and this is the new Dell E1705 right? probably DDR2? ...and probably a bit more 'temperamental'. who knows? worth a shot to run with the single SODIMM and single channel just to see if you can eliminate the problem. and then for best performance, get another 1GB SODIMM or see if you can get 2x512 modules (exchange). good luck.

 

no doubt a faulty stick. if the notebook could only hold 512 sticks it would show as 768mb, but this would not give you and bsods or anything

 

ummm what?

ddr2 has more pins than ddr so it wouldn't physically fit. you can mix and match ram speed and cas latancies and they would still work fine

I'm thinking the notebook doesn't like double sided ram sticks

 

ummm, DDR/DDR2 SODIMMS = 200pins

check it:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2612

you can mix and match (to a degree) but to play it safe (and for best performance), your best bet is matched pairs.

 

I took out the standard (samsung) 256 that came with the dell so that I wasn't mixing. I left the 1gb Corsair in it and it continued crashing. I haven't done the memory test yet though.

 

I just took out the 1gb from newegg and put the two 256mb that came with it (512) and still got that same blue screen.. im completly lost...

 

that sounds like it's not a ram issue; did you make any other changes ?

 

Hmm, nope.. I might reformat / call dell.. I dont know what else to do.

 

i second the escalation to dell. it doesn't sound like a RAM issue anymore. sorry that you're having issues with a new machine , especially the E1705 - powerhouse NKOTB! go for the complete unit replacement and the full complement of OEM installed RAM so that they can test it. good luck...

 

Do the memory test. Download the ISO from here, unpack, write to cd, boot with cd and let the program run the tests until 100%. If errors occure then
PS. It's always better to buy tested RAM modules. Find which RAM models your chipset supports and the buy. Otherwise it would be a blind pick.

 

Most likely a faulty RAM. Do what the previous post suggests: memtest86+!