RAM Installation Question probably EZ one

I bought 2 sticks of 1gb RAM for my dell optiplex 320 to max out the pc's memory. I poped out the 2 sticks of 512 and poped in the 2 sticks of new 1gb RAM. The pc would not boot. It will boot however it I leave a stick of 512 in dimm 1 and put a stick of 1gb in dimm2. The pc reads the ram at 1.5gb. How do I get around this? I want to get the pc to read the 1gb stic of ram in dimm 1 for a total of 2 gb.

 

Test both the 1GB sticks alone. If one of them is bad the computer would behave in the way you describe when you install both of them.

 

I checked both sticks alone and both appear to work OK. I also tried to install a single stick of 1 gb memory in the dimm 1 slot with nothing inthe dimm2 slot. The computer would not boot. I get a series of beeps and no boot. Is it possible that I need to set the dimm 1 slot for the additional ram manually or is it an automatic process?

 

It should be an automatic process, but you can check in your BIOS to be certain it doesn't have a manual setting.
I checked and your system should allow up to 2GB RAM per slot, so you aren't maxing out the Motherboard's capacity.

 

A series of beeps is an error message that usually refers to memory. If your slot 1 won't read memory sticks over 512MB, go through the BIOS for settings, as has already been suggested, but it's unlikely that anything useful is going to be there. Most likley you will need to settle for 1.5GB.

 

Not as easy as I thought it would be. I had Dell techs said that it was the mother board. I Had them come out and replace it as it is under warrenty. Still not go. I could not change anything in the BIOS as anything having to do with memory is unchangeble. Tech left scratching his head. not happy. :cry