I have Windows XP Pro. I have 2 PCI slots, one containing 120 mb and the other containing 256 mb giving me a total of 394 mb of memory. I bought 3 different sticks of 256 mb (due to I thought ram was bad, but its not.). I looked in Bios and it shows 2 sticks of 256 ram giving a total of 512 mb, BUT I had to take the new ram out due to when I would turn pc on a black screen would come up and I would select "start windows normally" and all that did was just keep rebooting. I have tried doing a bios update but unable due to when I put in the command on the command prompt it came back saying bad command. Is there something in the bios that might need to be checked or unchecked? I just don't know what to do. Please help and any and all help is deeply appreciated.
To help lessen the confusion part of the insides of the system, PCI slots are not your memory slots. PCI slots are what your add-in cards are attached to, with ports facing the outside of the case (below your video card slot). Your memory should match as well as they can be. If they are going to be two 256mb mods, at least buy the same make/model. That way, the speed of the ram, and the speed of the ram's timings are the same. Download and run a program called MemTest86. Run this test with each module in each slot. Sometimes, it's not the memory module that's the issue here, it could very well be the slot it's mounted in.
When it comes to memory issues, XP has a tendancy to reboot on the loading screen over and over again. Like stated above, match your memory. It may be the same type, but being different brands can make a HUGE difference. Your problem here is definately mis-matched memory modules. Good luck. ~Rich
