i need some help with installing RAM......

[alucard2050]

why do i have such bad luck with RAM??? here are my PC specs...

AOPEN AK77-333
Athlon 1.8
512 DDR
Soundblaster live 5.1
ATI Radeon 9000
Windows ME

I have a second 512 DDR stick to increase RAM up to 1024...Each stick works and each dimm slot works..Here's what happens...when I add the second stick then reboot my system the Windows ME startup logo appears then i get a blue screen with WARNING system is running extreamly low on ram. Norton antivirus may not be able to run.(or something like that)...so i removed Norton from my system then tried again. This time after the startup screen a windows error box appears and says something to the effect of not being able to load up wave files. i click OK. the screen goes black with the hourglass frozen in the middle...i then removed my sound card and rebooted..this time windows completly loads but as soon as i try to do something i get the blue screen with an error and a bunch of numbers....i wiped the drive and put WINDOWS back up and it played the Welcome to Windows file then it crashed......does ME support this much RAM????thanks to anyone who can help.......

[alucard2050]

OOPS- the error is WARNING-system is running extreamly low on memory....it does not say RAM it says MEMORY.....

[Greg12]

U should scrap Windows Me and upgrade to XP.


Windows ME may not support that much ram, some OS's only support up to like 512.

[alucard2050]

alot of people tell me to scrap it but for some reason ME has been the only op that hasn't given me problems except for this....i also dont have the cash to get another op at the moment...but why would ME not support this much if ME is the problem.....

[mrtristan]

The limit with Windows 98SE is 784MB, I believe. From my personal experience, it didn't "like" more than 512MB.

I'm not entirely sure, so don't quote me on this, but I think ME is also limited to 784MB. I'm guessing that it's the software, because that motherboard probably supports something like 2Gigs of RAM, or something like that.

I was able to use 1024MB of RAM (2 - 512MB modules) flawlessly, when I upgraded to Windows 2000 Professional. The only adjustment that I had to make was set the memory driving strength to "Lo," in my BIOS.

[alucard2050]

mrtristan- my board can support up to 3 gigs. during the boot it reads it fine...is 2000 the same as NT...i tried to install NT at one time but had problems with installing some of my hardware so i just stayed with ME.....would Microsoft have a patch for this if thats the problem? if so how can i find it? i've been to the site but everything i want support for they want $$$$......thanks.......

[alucard2050]

this sucks...i went to Micro's website and did some digging...turns out that 95,98,98se, and ME are limited....it has something to do with the vcache...the only workaround is to set the limit....i think the vcache max is 800..at least that what i have it set to now without problems and windows reads it...i tried the max 999 but windows gave me errors.....i guess i'll just have to settle with 800 till i get the cash for XP....thanks for the help......

[Greg12]

remember you are eligbable to buy the upgrade versions.

[sterno]

is 2000 the same as NT...i tried to install NT at one time but had problems with installing some of my hardware so i just stayed with ME

2000 is based on NT's core. It supports large amounts of memory, but support for newer hardware is (as you found) poor. XP is also based on NT (actually on 2000, which is based on NT). 95/98/ME are a seperate branch altogether, in many ways they have more in common with the old combination of DOS+Windows 3.11 for Workgroups+win32s than with NT/2000/XP.

Upgrade versions sometimes require a retail version, if you only have an OEM copy you may not be eligible for an upgrade. I think that's a real rip-off, since the manufacturer paid MS for the right to bundle Windows and passed that cost (the "Microsoft Tax" for non-Windows users) on to you.