RAM upgrade

[Hammer]

I have an old desktop PC that I’m going to reuse, but want to beef up the RAM first. The motherboard is ASRock P4I45D which I’ve checked out on their website and supports up to 2gb of RAM, so I bought 2 x 1gb of DDR1 266Mhz PC2100 which is supposedly compatible however I can’t get it to work.
I’ve tried each one separately and both together, using all permutations of the 2 slots, and get the same response. It powers up, beeps, powers off for a few seconds, then powers up again, but at no point is there any output on the screen. If I put the old 256m RAM back in everything is fine again and windows boots normally. I even tried updating the BIOS but that made no difference.
Anyone have any bright ideas what to try next? I’ve tried the tool on the Crucial website that is supposed to recommend compatible memory but it doesn’t recognise the mobo and that particular model isn’t listed on their website.

[VHG]

I note in the manual for the motherboard in the Advanced BIOS section it talks about an option called SDRAM Frequency.

It says "If [Auto] is selected, the motherboard will detect the memory module(s) inserted and assigns appropriate frequency automatically. You can also select other value as operating frequency: [200MHz], [266MHz]"

Try making sure this is set to Auto.

You can read the manual here

http://www.asrock.com...p?Model=P4i45D%20R3.0

[Hammer]

Thanks for that. I did see that in the manual and tried auto and forcing 266 but neither made any difference. I just want a bit more RAM and would gladly buy something else if I knew it would work...

[ChuckFickens]

Although it doesn't seem to say it in the specs I'd suspect that you need non-ECC and unbuffered memory. Do you have a link to the actual RAM you purchased?

[Hammer]

I got it from ebay but it's the same model number as this link. Seems to be both non-EEC and unbuffered.

http://www.lambda-tek...cs/B113603&viewSpec=y

[bazwillrun]

check the voltages of the old ram and see what the voltage of the new ram is.

[HowardKennitby]

you can get free system analysis software from here. It can give info about M/B, RAM etc.

I have been using it for years. It might give you some help.

http://www.gtopala.com/

[galeck1947]

Your replacement ram is too fast for your motherboard. See if you can access your BIOS and set the FSB speed to the lowest available and it should work but at a reduced speed but you will have the advantage of the extra ram.