Win2kpro SP4 won't recognize full 256 MB RAM

[pwhoon]

Hi, great to be new member.

Long time ago, installed 256 MB RAM on motherboard. Upgraded bios and Op Sys recently. Have downloaded all paches. System shows that all hardware is running fine.

When I check win2k under my comnputer\properties\general, it only shows 130600 KB of "physical memory". What happened to one of the 128 MB sticks I put in ASUS P2B mother board? See roughly same amount of RAM when I default to bios screen during boot to look at chipset and other settings. So OP Sys and Bios agree. Yet they are wrong.

Would like ideas on what is wrong and what to do, but first, here is what I've checked and done so far:

1) Swapped out the two "sticks" of 128 MB Corsair PC 100 SDRAM. No change. Would have thought that machine would have found "bad" ram in one of the sticks during memory check while trying to boot, but machine boots just the same with either stick in slot 1. Detects no bad ram at boot when either stick is in slot 1.

2) Cleaned out slot with compressed air before placing back ram sticks.

3) Used soft eraser to clean RAM gold contacts on both sides of each "stick".

4) Checked Administrative Tools\computer management\system Information\system Summary and it lists also 130,600 KB of Physical Memory, 34,564 available. (Have a nice big 775,000 KB page file on separate drive D).

5) Looked to see in P2B motherboard manual if there was any way to "enable" ram size in bios. None. Bios and Win2k should "know" that 256 MB of ram is available at boot.

Your suggestions on further diagnostics and checks to do are much appreciated in advance.

pwhoon

 

[Lanfo]

Have you tried Each stick seperately, and just booted with one 128mb module?

Try putting both sticks in and run Memtest86?

http://www.memtest86.com

MemTest is pretty easy use and well documented, I suggest printing out the documentation before you start the test.
I printed everything from the top of the page down to the "Planned Features" section.

I'm guessing one of those ram modules may be bad, so that would be the first thing I tested.

If both of the ram mods work after testing them one at a time, it could possibly be a problem with your PSU (I kind of doubt it though).

This motherboard has a "Voltage Monitor" that will give you an error when you start your PC, if any of the voltages are out of range, but this can be set to ignore in the BIOS or bypassed by pressing F1, (when it detects an error it gives the option of entering the BIOS or bypassing).

If the voltage meter is set to ignore you would not know if your 3.3v rail was out of range, it should be with in +/-5%, so it could be as low as 3.14, or as high as 3.46.

Personally I'd be getting a new PSU if mine was below 3.24.

 

[wolluf]

Is the RAM single or double sided? How old is mobo - older bioses only see half the RAM on single-sided sticks (so if both are single-sided, that might be your problem. Have you another (newer) machine you could try them in?

 

[pwhoon]

Hi Lano,

Thanks for your insight to boot the computer with each stick of ram separately in slot 1. That did the trick: Stick A booted OK and ran OK. With stick B, the computer failed to boot at all - tried three times.

so, it is clear that stick B is defective, and needs to be replaced. FYI, this ram is now about 5 years old, and way beyond warentee, but it is not expensive to replace it now, with prices lower for 128 MB.

When both sticks of ram are in the computer, apparently the bios is programmed to bypass the bad stick if it is in slot 1, and use the good stick in slot 2. This surprised me.

I have a memory checker in fix-it utilities, and I am surprised it did not find the bad ram when it was in wither slot 1 or 2. Perhaps because the bios ignored it completely.

Thanks very much for your help. The thing for folks to remember is to test each stick of ram individually in slot 1, when there are questions.

My best,

pwhoon