[Richiiee]

I have 2x 256MB RAM sticks installed on my motherboard. I'm running Windows XP SP2, 32-bit. A few months ago I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows. After a few days of using it, I noticed that my RAM is showing up as just 384MB rather than the 512MB it should be showing. I didn't think anything of it and thought the problem would go away after a while. It's been several months and Windows is till only showing that I have 256MB of RAM.

When I take out one stick, it shows 256MB of RAM. When I take out the other stick, it shows 128MB of RAM, meaning one of my sticks of RAM seems to have.. lost 128MB? Everest Home Edition says I have 2x 256MB sticks of RAM installed but Windows and the BIOS says there is 1 256 stick and 1 128 stick to add up to 384. Is this because of faulty hardware - maybe one of my sticks is dying? Or is this a glitch in Windows? Unfortunately I don't have any other 256MB sicks of RAM to test other than the 2 I use.

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Are these identical types and brands of RAM? Did they ever show as total 512mb?

[Gnomad1600]

Are these identical types and brands of RAM? Did they ever show as total 512mb?

[Broni]

Run memtest: http://www.techspot....topic62524.html
Most likely, one stick is bad.

[Richiiee]

Are these identical types and brands of RAM? Did they ever show as total 512mb?

No, one stick is a Jade Star Tech stick and one is a Hyundai stick. And yes, they both used to show as 512MB.

Run memtest: http://www.techspot....topic62524.html
Most likely, one stick is bad.

I burned the CD and tried to run it but there is nothing to run... it doesn't autostart either. Don't have a floppy drive.

Edit: Ohh, you have to boot off the CD. I'll try that.

Edited by Richiiee, 14 November 2008 - 11:05 PM.

[Broni]

What do you mean by "nothing to run"?
Did you read memtest manual?
You need to boot from memtest CD. The test will automatically start.

[Richiiee]

Ok I followed the instructions and burnt it onto a CD and went into the BIOS and made sure my CD drive was the primary boot location. It still didn't give me an option to boot off the CD.

[123Runner]

Did you make it a bootable CD?
Use Burncdcc in my signature.

When you changed the bios to boot from CD did you save the changes?

[Richiiee]

Well looks like I can't do this until I go out and buy blank CDs.. ones with files on them already don't work.

[Broni]

ones with files on them already don't work.

It must be brand new CDR, not CDRW.
memtest creates CD, which is bootable by default. No extra action needed.
When booting from CD, are you present at the computer? At some point, you should see a message:
Press any key to boot from CD

[Richiiee]

Will this fix any RAM problems by the way, or just locate the problem?

[jt1990]

I'll bet that 128MB of your RAM is being used as shared video RAM - If you have an onboard video, that is. If you do, go to the BIOS and check and see how much RAM is being taken for the video.

[Broni]

Will this fix any RAM problems by the way, or just locate the problem?

You can't fix RAM, but you'll check, if your RAM is OK.