RAM problem, well half a problem

[farmercal]

Good Day fellow ATers.

I have a slight problem with my Corsair 256MB PC2100 stick of RAM. My wife was online the other day and the computer was acting strange (loading pages slow, etc.) afterwards I was getting a slight booting problem concerning a "System 32\Drivers\Ntfs.sys" problem which doesn't appear at boot up anymore (go figure).

Anyway, today I was looking at The Windows Task Manager and noticed that it indicated it only has 130MB of memory instead of the 256MB which was installed. I installed the RAM in another slot and got the same indication. I then tried a generic 256 MB stick of RAM from my kid?s computer and my system now indicates that I have 261620 of total Physical Memory which is proper.

My question is "Can this happen?" I thought when RAM died it just died not appear as half the size. Has this happened to anyone else?

Also, I noticed that the generic RAM had only 8 ICs on the stick while the Corsair had a total of 16 ICs with both sticks having the same size chips. Is that better or worse (16 vs. 8) or just different technology?

I won't contact Corsair until I hear from you guys just in case it is not the RAM.

Thanks,

Cal

 

[MrWizzard]

I have a machine that recently just started acting really slow and when I checked the ram it said 96 but it was a 128 chip, for whatever reason the computer just started reporting ram incorrectly, I tried different chips in it to find that out, is there any way you can test that piece of ram in another machine?

 

[farmercal]

MrWizzard I just tried your suggestion and installed it chip in my kids machine and it registered in there as 130 MB just like in my main machine.

 

[gooseman]

I don't completely understand this myself but try this.

Check your motherboard manual. Some motherboards can only take single sided ram. Sounds like your new stick it double sided. Also, on some boards, they will take double sided ram but you have to have it in certain slots.

Just a thought.

 

[farmercal]

It is not a new stick of RAM, I have been using this RAM for over a year (flawlessly) and it was registering as 256MB until now.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Your ram went bad it looks like 1/2 the board isn't functioning properly eg it's a double sided dimm (2banks) and only 1 side / Bank is working, I'd RMA it Corsair normaly has a lifetime warrenty. Hope this helps....

 

[farmercal]

Arcanedeath that's what I figured when it had the same problem in two different machines with two different motherboards. Thanks for the reply, I 'll contact Corsair. When I bought it at NewEgg it said it had a lifetime warranty which helped me make the decision for the purchase.

Cal

 

[MrWizzard]

Sorry time to RMA sucks since it takes 3 months sometimes
Good luck