Added Ram. Now Machine Won't Start?

My son got a couple of RAM sticks from his friend, and tried to put them into his motherboard. ( He didn't check to see if they were compatible. )

He took out the old ram, put in the new, and the machine wouldn't boot. Only the fan runs.

He took the new ram out and out the original back in, but ...... still nothing.

Did he kill it?

 

Strange, try one stick at a time then.

EDIT: Run memtest86 on the sticks by burning the image to CD and booting from same. This bypasses Windows, and if you even get one error then you have a bad stick.

 

Ran the tests on one stick at a time - all good. Put them all back in and it fired right up.

I have no clue what he did to it to make it not work, but we do absolutely appreciate your help in getting it back up.

(My internet friends just beat up his internet friends! )

 

I agree. Kids don't pay enough attention to details. It's easy enough to badly seat the RAM, I've done it, once.:-o:-D

 

Just once??

 

Yes, just that once or erm twice.rolleyes:-D

 

That's probably it, but he (being 17 and entirely capable of handling everything all by himself with absolutely no assistance from his parents) got a little defensive when I asked him that, so I backed off. Then he spent New Years Eve online with a couple of his geek friends, and came to the conclusion that the power supply had failed.

When he started hovering around my laptop,( :eek ) I thought perhaps I should step in.

 

How could they come to the conclusion that was the power supply? RAM only adds 8W/GB, so unless the PSU was already on the very edge, it couldn't be the culprit, too coincidental. Another possibility is that the gifted sticks had some crud on the fingers( has to be an older machine if someone gifts you some RAM) that was then transferred to the slot or moved some existing crud that was already there and your testing each sick cleaned out that slot. Only a theory.

17 year olds these days were almost born with keyboards up their butts though they are good but not experienced enough. Anyways, diagnosing from afar is always difficult. Glad you got it running!:major

 

Is it running on the old sticks or the new? Or both combined?
Wondering if it might have been a high density/low density problem.

 

It's running with the original memory installed. Part of the problem was that the new RAM pushed him over the limit of what that machine can handle according to Crucial.com.

And I too was suspicious of the theory that the power supply just happened to fail while mucking about with the RAM. He was really worried that he'd broken it badly, and I'm definitely familiar with that sinking feeling.....so I'm glad it was an easy fix.

But I don't know how they got there. He had his headphones on, so I couldn't hear the conversation. That's probably best.