Hi all, Luckily fell across this site after getting totally fed up with my system, it is a 4 year old Tiny with the following spec...

650Mhz Processor
255 Ram (or is it)?
40Gig Hard drive
AOL Broadband (500)

Yes terribly out of date and very slow, but new technology scares me and the thought of buying a new machine frightens me to death!!

The machine was 128 RAM but about 6 months ago I took the plunge and decided to double the RAM to 256, I think it was from here I started having mass problems.

My computor is freezing dead... even Ctr Alt and delete will not activate, the only way to get going again is to switch off at the wall. On a good day it will do it once or twice, funny enough the first one is usually about the same time at roughly 8.00pm in the evening (Its fired up at roughly 8am every day). On a bad day it will do it about 10 times.... today is a bad day! It always does it when entering into a new web page and the blue download bar is approx three quarters away across.

When I go into device manager it says the RAM is 255... a few people I know say this is not correct it should say 256?

When I spoke to the PC shop whop supplied and fitted the RAM they said no 255 is ok, you may have a graphics card using 1 RAM.... does this make sense to you as it does not me!

Hope you can help, done the Microsoft maintanence, deleted cookies done an online virus check and all is ok.

Thanks in advance!

K

Fireman_sam,

The PC shop is right. It's very common for memory figures to come out a little less than expected because "on-board" or "shared" graphics chips allocate a little bit of the memory for themselves. If you look on the back of your PC at the connectors, you'll probably find that most of the connectors are in one big rectangular block - there will be a serial port, a PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports together, a parallel (printer port) and maybe others. If the monitor connector is in the same bank of sockets, then you've got on-board graphics and it's set to use 1Mb of your system memory.

When you upgraded your PC to 256Mb RAM, did they replace the 128Mb memory module with a 256Mb module or did they simply fit a second 128Mb module onto the motherboard alongside the existing one?

If you have two memory modules, I would strongly recommend removing the new one. If the problem goes away, then you can take the PC and memory module back and explain that the memory they've fitted is faulty and needs to be replaced under warranty. Before you could confidently say that it's faulty (and not just incompatible), you'd need to take out the original memory and put the new memory back in. If it crashes with just the new memory installed, it's faulty. If it doesn't crash, it's simply incompatible with the original memory.

In either case, you have a warranty claim - either it doesn't work or it's not suitable for the use that you purchased it for.

If you need assistance with opening up the PC and removing the memory, let us know

Wow, thanks for that, very informative and makes a lot of sense, I truly think my second bit of ram was dodgy.

I watched him put the second bit in (and yes it was a case of another 128), it took hime quite a while and he commented on the fact it was not going in very well and normally they fall in!

I am no where near brave enough to mess about with the bits of RAM, I reckon I should just take the tower in and ask them to sort it!

Thanks very much.

Sorry I forgot to ask... would a dodgy bit of RAM cause the problems I am experiancing??

Thanks

Originally Posted by Fireman sam

.......it took hime quite a while and he commented on the fact it was not going in very well.......

Once the system case is opened, fitting memory takes literally 5-10 seconds. If it takes a while because it's not going in properly, it will probably work its way loose over the next few months and/or cause a variety of problems

Originally Posted by Fireman sam

.......I reckon I should just take the tower in and ask them to sort it!

Sounds fair to me. You're not a hardware expert - that's why you paid them to do it for you. They should have done it a bit better!

Originally Posted by Fireman sam

Sorry I forgot to ask... would a dodgy bit of RAM cause the problems I am experiancing??

Oh yes, all kinds of weird and wonderful problems can be caused by faulty memory. Locking up beyond recovery is one of those common symptoms.

Thanks very much for that, when I dont need the PC for a day I shall ensure to take it in there.

Thanks again!!

OK, let us know how it goes

Have you had a chance to take the system back to the shop for them to check out the memory?

Hi, no I have not had the chance... the problem is probably over 6-8 months old now so chance of a warrenty job is small. A polite way to describe the outlet is shoddy and cowboy looking... went there on recomendation but still cant help but feel they are cowboys!!

Watching them stand over my open PC tower with a dog end in mouth with ash approx 4" long on the end does not enspire confidence!!