[snurg]

Recently I upgraded the RAM on the motherboard of an old Celeron 433 PC. The 2 memory slots on the motherboard has been upgraded from 128Mb (2 x 64 chips) to 256Mb (2 x 128 chips). Chip compatibillity is not a problem (all SDRAM PC133). Problem is that the PC & Windows98 in general seem to be running much slower since the upgrade. No other software or hardware has been added or altered. I assumed performance would improve with added memory.

Windows & Explorer is noticably running slower now including when booting the PC at startup. No obvious stalling or crashing. I checked the specs of the PC by the manufacturer which states that the motherboard/CPU will handle an upgrade of memory up to 500Mb.

Also checked the "mem" in DOS which diplays that the computer knows that 256Mb is present but not in use.

Is memory managed & used when required by certain software?

Does Windows98 know how to manage the memory or does the system need tweaking?

Edited by snurg, 03 May 2005 - 11:28 AM.

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Hi,

The only thing I can think of at the moment is to test the ram with memtest86. Test each stick individually and post back any errors, let memtest run for at least 3 passes.

Rick

[Doby]

Hi,

The only thing I can think of at the moment is to test the ram with memtest86. Test each stick individually and post back any errors, let memtest run for at least 3 passes.

Rick

[snurg]

Thanks for your assistance Rick,

Done the test 3 times using the memtest86 program successfully (total testing time over 7 hours for 3 passes). Both 128 Mb slots & chip sticks tested as OK thanks. No problems identified by memtest86.

One item of note: when I replaced memory I pulled out one of the previous SDRAM 64 Mb card sticks from one of the two slots, it had a strange smaller microchip in the middle of the slot card that was different from any of the memory chips on it (a Samsung made mem stick). It looks like no other SDRAM stick I've seen before. Normally every memory chip on the stick usually appear to be all identical (size, shape etc) - It has a Compaq serial sticker on it so I imagine it is an original 64 Mb memory card. The PC that I'm having problems is a Compaq Presario desktop in a tower.

Curious as might the removal of this particular mem chip stick having something to do with the problem?

or not, I'm only guessing.

[Doby]

No the removel of the original 64 stick should have nothing to do with your problem. The ram should be good because it passed memtest but 7 hours for 3 passes seems excesive but its been awhile since I ran it on a processor that slow.

I have a celeron 455 mhz or something around here I'll run memtest on it to compare and let you know if it takes that long.

Normally I would have you try and up the vdimm (memory voltage) a little and change some ram timmings but with a compaq and its limited bios setting that won't work.

Rick