Upgraded Ram

Hi, hope someone can help me out as I have NO idea what I'm doing...received an older emachine t3100 from my mom for my son, he likes to play games so we bought new ram cards to upgrade (from 256 to 512), replacement went smoothly, but now when we turn it on it says "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this." We have tried starting in safe mode, etc, but it still says the same thing. We can take out one of the new cards and use an old card and new card and it will run ok, but it doesn't have enough memory to play the game he wants. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Have you looked to see if the "new" ram is compatiable with your system? If not, it will not work.


Here is what information I got for you. http://www.memoryx.net/ememt3me.html

 

Well, we ordered what was suggested from emachines-so I'm assuming that it is compatible. We can use one of each card (one old and one new) and it seems to run ok, just won't let us use both new cards. The game my son wants to play has to have a minimum of 512 ram.

 

Do both of the rams have the same information on them?

 

Old cards reads 128MB, SDR DIMM, H... new cards read SDRAM PC133 256 MB, all cards are compatible in actual size and shape.

 

Could be the PC133 you have, I refered back to the Emachine site as well and it states 256MB eMachines Desktop PC100 SDRAM DIMM (p/n EM-256MB-PC100-D) You should use the PC100.

 

Ok, will contact the supplier to see if we can exchange them. Thanks so much for all of your help

 

There were certainly plenty of compatibility problems with 'boards and PC66/100/133 memory way back when it was new.

I use www.crucial.com to check for compatibility (their prices, support and delivery speed are good too in my experiences with them).

Perhaps this is a 'single-sided vs double-sided' memory problem?

 

Usually the 133 will step itself down to the 100's speed and just run slower.

 

Yes, that was the theory alright, didn't always work like that though - given the prices of RAM then, it was pretty frightening when you paid out $150 for something that registered at 50% of what you paid for

Crucial doesn't seem to list the T1300, orcalogic does but no real details on the specifics of the memory type http://www.orcalogic.co.uk/asp/prodtype.asp?prodtype=48596&ft=m

 

to satrow
Try checking for the T3100 instead of T1300.

 

:-o it's late here ...

 

I can accept that.rolleyes

 

Crucial have none in stock but

Now I'm really confused - unless it is a single/double-sided issue, keep investigating, I'll call by again after some sleep.

 

Does it let you use either one of the new ones in either slot? Test one new at a time, leaving the other slot empty. If both new ones work, and both slots work, then we'll start digging for real.

But start by testing for the easy things first, you'll pull out less hair that way.