wrote in message
om...
I have a Gateway Athlon 700 with 584MB of memory. 1 256MB
SDRAM chip
with ECC, 2 128MB chips, non ECC. Got 2 256MB SpecTek Non
ECC chips
from my brother from his old computer. Replaced the 2 128
chips with
the 2 256MB chips, figuring no problems would occur. Lo
and behold,
boot the system up and get:
Windows could not start because of an error in the
software.
Please report this problem as :
load needed DLLs for kernel
Please contact your support person to report this problem.
Take the 2 chips out, problem fixed, boots up fine. What
about these
chips would make the system fail? They should be
compatible with my
system.
Any help would be appreciated
thanks,
Oscar
ALL of the Slot A Athlon mobos were very fussy about the
quality of the memory used in them. Most of these boards
will not support 3 sticks of memory. They also have some
weird chip configuration requirements: they wont take double
sided DIMMs or a certain number of memory chips, etc..
I have 3 Asus K7M Slot A mobos. One of them will only run
with Micron Crucial DIMMs. It will take 2 PC100/128 ECC
DIMMs or 1 PC100/256 and 1 PC100/128 ECC but nothing else
that I've tried.
Another K7M was running great with a mishmash of DIMMs until
this past week, a Corsair PC100/256 DIM, a Kingston
PC100/128 Value RAM DIMM and a Kingston PC133/128 Value RAM
DIMM.
All of a sudden it was posting 384MB instead of 512MB and I
was getting Windows Protection Errors. I spent hours
switching memory and testing with Memtest86 and DocMem. It
only runs with 1 stick now, so it's a mobo problem.
The 3rd board will only run 1 or 2 PC100/128 DIMMs.
I use Micron Crucial memory most of the time and
occasionally the best quality Muskin RAM. I got a "real
deal" on some Kingston ValueRam a while back. It tested fine
with Memtest86 and DocMem memory testing programs.
This weekend I tested all of my systems and found 3 of the
ValueRam DIMMs failed the memory tests! They have a
"lifetime" guarantee but still it's not worth the hassle!
BTW, the new version 3.0 of Memtest86 does a much better job
with Athlons. earlier versions had some problems with AMD
chipsets used on some Athlon mobos.
There is a lot of junk memory on the market. The memory
chips themselves are produced on 200mm (8") or 300mm (12")
silicon wafers. All of the chips are tested before the
wafers are cut up into "die" (chips).
Chips near the center of the wafers are generally the best
quality. To keep their yields per wafer up, chip makers
market finished memory chips in several quality levels. A
few chip makers like Micron, Samsung and Siemens produce
finished memory products but most chips are sold to memory
fabricators who assemble them onto the small printed circuit
boards called memory modules (SIMMs, DIMMs SODIMMs, etc.).
The best modules are made with premium quality matched
memory chips. The worst are made from the bottom of the
yield chips and are sometimes fudged to report that they are
better quality products. Cheap memory sometimes isn't even
tested by low end fabricators; it takes time and costs money
to run these tests - it's cheaper to just replace the
defective products !
Bad or intermittently defective memory is one of the biggest
causes of Windows stability problems.
Check out this site for a better explanation of chip and
memory module manufacturing:
http://www.crucial.com/library/manufacturing.asp
ALL of the newer CPUs, both Intel and AMD have memory
issues - and Power Supply problems. Athlon systems require a
minimum of 300W output from a premium quality power supply.
There have been PSs rated at 300W that actually put out only
195W !
--
Chas.
(Drop spamski to E-mail
me)