i have a dell dimension 2400 and i am trying to upgrade it. it only has 256mb worth of ram in it so its pretty slow. i bought a 400mHz 1GB ram and i wanted to use this with the original ram. when i put it in the computer though, it wont start up. i'll turn on the pc and at the very begining, when the BIOS is loading i think, the loading bar just stops. i dont know what to do. please help.
sounds like the ram isn't compatible. try running with just the one gig stick. it seems your old ram is only pc2100 or pc2700 (conflicting sources), so your ram will not run at 400 MHz anyway with the old stick. if the pc won't run with just the one gig stick by itself, try a bios update next.
ya it does the same thing with just the 1gig stick only. a bios update? should i go to dell.com for that?
yupps. sounds like you must be trying to run ram that's too fast for your current bios. if there's no update that gives compatibility with your ram, you're SOL without a new motherboard and need to buy some clocked down ram.