ram placement

OrkinYards

Junior Member
Oct 27, 2002
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I have a ECS motherboard with a 256 MB DDR (pc2100) on it and have had a couple of problems with not enough memory messages popping up when i'm running several programs. Someone told me that how the ram is placed on the mother board might have something to do with it, but i only have 2 slots....when building the computher i thought that there was only one location a single chip would work in.....should i just order another chip or what? Thanks in advance

Jeff
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
9,640
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No such thing as a RAM placement problem. First of all give the board the latest BIOS, then reset the BIOS settings to the "optimal" default set, then run a thorough RAM test like the one from www.memtest86.com
 

Buz2b

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2001
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Originally posted by: OrkinYards
I have a ECS motherboard with a 256 MB DDR (pc2100) on it and have had a couple of problems with not enough memory messages popping up when i'm running several programs. Someone told me that how the ram is placed on the mother board might have something to do with it, but i only have 2 slots....when building the computher i thought that there was only one location a single chip would work in.....should i just order another chip or what? Thanks in advance

Jeff

Your trouble could be related to System Resources as much as it is to RAM. In fact, I think you should tackle those first and see if you can clear up some extra bandwidth for multi-tasking. Trying to go into detail on this would be a bit time consuming so you really need to do some research for yourself. However, to get you started, you can get a decent explanation of the troubles here and a little bit more here. Also, as a start, you could go into MSCONFIG and eliminate some of the "extra" items you have running at startup. Of course, if you have Win 9x, you could also switch/upgrade to XP and eliminate most of these kind of worries. Good Luck!
 

OrkinYards

Junior Member
Oct 27, 2002
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I had the memtest running for almost 14 hours and it still did not finish...do i need to just let it go for longer or what?!? i was tired of waiting after 14 hours...
 

Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
7,357
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First: This is a 100% software problem. Yes 14 hours is normal for a memtest, but I don't think you need to run one at all.

if you are Windows 9x/ME then hit ctrl-alt-del to see how much stuff you have running. Also how many icons do you have down by your system clock? Try to reduce these as much as possible. You may have some odd application leaking memory.

Give us a word-for-word of the error message you receive. Could be louse pagefile settings or something..I need the exact error.