RAM upgrade problem

I'm installing new/more RAM on my wife's old desktop machine prior to upgrading the OS from XP to Win 7 64 bit Home Premium.

I built this computer some years back and it's worked fine ever since and is suitable for my wife's use since she uses it for email, running MS Word, some web surfing and little else. We've had no other problems with this machine for some months except for the attempted RAM upgrade as described below. We have not installed any other new hardware or software for quite some time, though we do keep the OS and Norton 360 updated regularly.

So here's the problem...

I'd installed 1 Gig of RAM when I built it oh, probably 5 or maybe 6 years ago (2 x 512 MB sticks of Geil PC2-6400) which has worked fine. (But this computer was in storage for about 3 years until 6 months ago so hasn't really been used all that much and, as mentioned above, has been working fine since we set it up again.)

I purchased four gigs of G.Skill ram (also PC2-6400) and can't get the machine to boot with all four 1 gig sticks installed. The RAM was purchased as two packs of pairs of dual channel 1 gig sticks. Either pair of RAM sticks will boot up in either pair of dual channel MB slots (1 and 3 or 2 and 4), but when I put all four in (with the matched dual channel pairs in 1 and 3 and 2 and 4 respectively) I either get a single long beep from POST (DFI Ultra II M-2 motherboard) or the computer screen just stays blank and I hear nothing from the POST. (The first time I tried it I got the long beep from POST, but then I realized I hadn't put the matching pairs in the correct slots for dual channel operating. Since installing the dual channel pairs in the correct channel configuration (matched pairs in 1-3 and 2-4) I get no POST beeps at all -- the machine just doesn't boot, the screen remains black, and there are no POST beeps.

I've also tried putting the dual channel pairs in slots 1-2 and 3-4 respectively but that doesn't work either (and I didn't really expect it to).

I can't enter the BIOS to check or change settings with all four DIMMs installed since, now, the machine won't even POST. When I boot with just a single pair everything in the BIOS looks fine. Basic memory settings are at CL5-5-5-15 as suggested on the DIMM packaging and the RAM is running at 800 MHz (as the old 2 x 512 sticks of RAM were).

Any thoughts about how to get all four sticks working together? I'm still running Win XP with SP3 as of today.

I guess I should also mention this machine has a Thermaltake 500 watt power supply with 2 identical WD SATA hard drives (second drive used for backup), 1 floppy drive, 1 DVD burner, and a very old and modest graphics card. As mentioned the motherboard is a DFI NF Ultra II M-2.

Thanks for any helpful observations and suggestions.

For now I'm going to proceed with the install of Win 7 tomorrow as 2 gigs of RAM is sufficient and, according to the Win 7 upgrade advisor, the rest of the machine's hardware exceeds the minimum requirements for the upgrade.

 

A few things worth checking:

* What is the maximum memory the motherboard will support? Although rare, I've seen a few older boards that will only support a max. of 2GB (4x512 or 2x1GB).

* Do you have the latest BIOS on your board? Check the board mfr's download/driver page for your model. Updating the BIOS will sometimes solve max. memory capacity issues.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, gman. According to the MB manual the board does support up to 4 gigs of RAM. Upgrading the BIOS is certainly a good suggestion and I'll do that either later this evening or tomorrow and report back.

Thanks again, gman!

 

I just this afternoon downloaded the latest BIOS I could find for this DFI motherboard (Feb 2008, but still about 2 years newer than the old BIOS) and flashed the BIOS onto the CMOS without a hitch.

That did the trick! Computer BIOS shows all four gigs present and Win XP shows 3.25 gigs which is, for 32 bit XP at least, as much as it can use. Now I can get on with installing Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit which should use all 4 gigs of the new RAM.

Thanks again gman863 for the prompt and very helpful suggestion! Case closed.