iQon problem (memory)

[broxybear]

hi guys,

i am trying to fix a friends computer and have come upon a snag.
the computer is a
iQon
tesc03
multimedia by phillips

the motherboard is a foxconn 661m05-6ls
it had 256mbs memory in it and he wants me to upgrade the memory.
so bought a 1GB PC3200 DDR 400MHZ 184PIN 1 GB DDR400 DIMM 1 GB HD the exact specs it says i need.

i put the memory in with the 256mb one to start with and it booted up, but kept restarting when it reached the desktop.
i took out the 256mb card and just ran it with the 1gb stick but it just keeps doing the same.
i put the 256mb stick back in and it works fine.
i contacted the people i bought the memory of and they suggested clearing the cmos.. but i dont really want to do this if it is not worth it. so i thought i would ask advice first.
i know how to clear it, i just havent done it before so want to know if it is safe to do so. i dont want to land up paying for a new motherboard lol.

i have replaced memory in a few computers in the past and never came upon this before.


a bit of advice would be great. dont have much time though, if the memory is faulty i have to send it back lol.

[stroyal]

Welcome to TechIMO!
Is it the same brand?

The dirty little secret of memory is that even if all the specs are the same, the memory can still be incompatible.
I just bought Kingston for a Dell laptop that was incompatible, so I'm stuck with it.
Reordered Corsair ( exact same specs) and it worked. This has happened to me several times over the years, mostly with Dells.

You should see if the computer manufacturer has a recommended memory brand list, or go to the sights of various memory manufacturer and see if they have a list of compatible computers.

If no changes have ever been made in the BIOS clearing CMOS most likely won't do a thing, but there is not much danger in doing so.
Check in the BIOS and see if it even has the ability to manually change memory settings. If it can, check if the timing has been set messed with.

If it is incompatible, they probably won't take it back, it has to be bad.
NewEgg will only do a swap for the same sticks.

Make sure that board will take 1gig sticks.

Edit Just checked specs, it takes 2 gig max, so with 2 slots it must take 1 gig sticks.

[broxybear]

yeah the place i bought the memory actually named the motherboard as compatible with the memory.

i will clear the cmos and see if that helps

[stroyal]

Can you test the memory in another computer, or since it will boot a little, maybe you can test it in the foxcon with memtest86 or one of the other memtest programs.

It has been my experience that incompatible memory will not boot at all, and bad memory can go into an endless loop of reboots. But that isn't absolute.

[stroyal]

I think this is the original, but there so many copycats now.

Memory Test - Top 5 Free Memory Testing Software Tools - Memory Diagnostics - Test RAM

[broxybear]

i downloaded memtest on to my comp and tryed to put it onto the other comp, but it wonnt open it.

the comp is staying on just now but when it started up it came up with

avgcsrvx-avgrs-truevector service-have had to shut because of problems and errors loading other programmes.

this is after i cleared the cmos

[stroyal]

How did you load it? The down load should be a floppy boot disk creator, or a cd boot disk creator. After creating the boot disk, you need to boot from that. You may have to adjust your boot order in the BIOS accordingly.


Edit: I think "true vector" is part of zone alarm. Does that computer have zone alarm?
It shouldn't have anything to do, directly with the problem.

[broxybear]

can someone tell me how long the memtest is suppossed to run, i have had it running for like 2 hours and it says it has found like 70,000 errors lol. is this right

[stroyal]

Some people people run it overnight. From what I understand, it is possible to not find errors on the first pass if the error is small.

If you find any errors the memory is bad.

[broxybear]

i thought it was running a bit long lol, so i started it again.
different this time.

it says pass 4 and fail 519 so far and thats after 1hr 57mins.
so does this indicate that the memory is definatly faulty. and i should send it back