im working on my family's old dell box to get it working well again, im planning on installing linux, but i bought some RAM for it, matches up to the MoBo perfect, right Mhz everything, the BIOS recognizes it perfect, but when i boot into XP to backup the files it gets the login screen, and at first, it let me choose a user, then went to BSOD, and the last time, it flashes the login screen the goes BSOD, i removed the new memory and now it boots fine, does anyone know the problem?

Edit: should this go in It Came From Redmond? if so, could the mods move it please

Bad ram.

And no, bluescreens are generally hardware problems, which we service.

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You added the new RAM in with the old? Did you buy more than one stick of new RAM? Try switching the modules into different slots to try to isolate which stick might be bad. It could also be that the DIMM slot is bad.

^Do what he says, but you may want to run memtest86 to test for the bad RAM instead of just waiting for the BSOD.

Can you try the RAM in another computer? That way you could work out if it's a bad slot or bad RAM.

it was the DIMM slot, i put the new RAM in the slot the old was in, and now it runs perfect, thanks for the help

Interesting. In my experience, this is very uncommon, but I'm glad someone pointed it out.

If your DIMM slots are bad or going bad, might be time to invest in a new board altogether.

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Most likely it was incompatible ram, if you left the old ram in when testing the new ram.

LJ, how do I get in on the Folding @ Home team? I have a 3.2 GHz Core 2 Duo at your command.
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Find the totse team number at http://folding.stanford.edu/ and enter it in the client when you install.

although it shouldnt boot at all, do they have differnt CAS latency's?

If you want, you can download a program called CPU-z, install your old stick, boot up in windows, and take a screen shot of the memory tab in CPU-z. Do the same thing with only your new stick in. Or if you don't want to take screen shots, just post the frequency, and the top four timings, starting at CAS# Latency.

I'm not sure if motherboards will go by the SPD with the the highest timings, but if it does, then it might be making the other stick unstable. If this is the case, then simply manually setting the timings won't do anything (If your BIOS will even let you do that).