Dirty SDRAM?

jerrygarcia · May 30th, 2002, 12:05 AM

My brother has a Compaq Presario m/n 5BW220 and was having problems with it. It was freezing and wouldn't go through regular shut down procedures and couldn't download his e-mail. He is running M$ ME os. I told him I would take a look. Stock, it has 64mb ram and after cleaning all the trash up it still wouldn't run scandisk or defragand zero free memory. Did some tweaking and started it in safe mode and defrag and scandisk thorough worked fine except for shutting down right.

Everything looked good when I took it back and I told him to install more mem, at least 256mb. Too impatient to order it from www.crucial.com, but went out and bought Samsung 256mb PC133. Went over to install it and nothing, no beeps or anything. So I put his original 64mb in and it started up and shut down. Put the 256 back in and nothing. Tried both and only recognized the 64. Took the 256 back out and the machine started faster and was going through shut down the right way with only the 64mb. Ended up putting 2x128 PC100 and it is running great. It wouldn't recognize the 256 although it is supposed to handled 512 with 2 slots. Maybe it was the PC133?

The only thing I can figure is when I went through installing and uninstalling the 64 stick is that I rubbed the contacts clean and it started running the machine the right way. Puzzle-ing!? Any thoughts?

Cook_N · May 30th, 2002, 01:30 AM

Ran into a computer the other day to install 256 had to go into the bios and change a setting for ">256" good luck

squeech · May 30th, 2002, 02:16 AM

Many times the BIOS has a setting for the memory timings (well...more often than not). This is supposed to be at auto, but if it is set to a specific speed it will only take that speed. The board may also not be PC133 compatible, but that is highly unlikely...the BIOS will tell you for sure.

nunyadam · May 30th, 2002, 02:30 AM

I would think the 133 memory would just default to 100mhz. 100 @ 133 could cause a problem though.
check the bio's setting's or possibly a bios flash to get it to recognize the extra memory .
It could also just be a bad stick of memory take it back and get another.

nunya

Geotpf · June 1st, 2002, 06:30 PM

It's possible the memory you purchased was high density and the motherboard only can use low density memory. Also, computers from Compaq and other major companies are sometimes ultra-picky about what memory will work in them.

daveleau · June 2nd, 2002, 09:43 AM

I agree with Geotpf. The high density RAM will not work in a lot of machines.

DLR37919 · June 2nd, 2002, 10:17 AM

Yes some mobo's are real selective I have an Aopen AX6BC won't take anything but pc66 drop a pc 100 and it won't boot or even beep.Guess should did,got sick of the limitations so gave box to mother to get it out of my house but shes tickled to have better than a 366.