I bought a Tiger Direct computer about a year ago and just recently decided to upgrade the ramm from one gig to two gigs. The computer uses is 2700 333Mhz ram. I removed the two sticks of 512MB and replaced them with two individual sticks of one gig ram. The computer turned on but did nothing else. When I replaced the new ram with the old ram the computer turned on and worked fine. I then decided to put all four sticks of ram in and the computer did not acknowledge the two new sticks. What am I doing wrong?

What operating system do you use?

Windows XP

Hi,

Try to run the computer with only one 1GB RAM stick. Check whether it runs.

It would probably be helpful to mention the type of cpu and mainboard in the
computer. I suppose it is possible that the motherboard is not able to
access 1GB RAM chips, or that it needs a bios update in order to be able to
do so. Take a look at the motherboard manual for any possible answer.

Regards,
Paramesh.

I tried puting one gig of the new ram in and the same thing happened. Then I inserted the old ram and everything worked fine. I tried all different types of combinations and the new ramm was never recognized by the computer. I am not sure exactly what type of motherboard but I have a Pentium 2.4Mhz processor. I don't know much on the bios part but I was always told to never mess with the bios unless you know exactly what you are doing because if you mess that up you are out of gas. SO I haven't messed with the bios but I am willing to try whatever.

Please find out what motherboard you have.

Details such as motherboard make/model, CPU (as it relates to memory bus), and motherboard chipset are relevant in this context.

One possible reason is you are trying to use memory that the computer can't access - it might be limited to 512MB per slot, or it might be limited to low density memory modules.

Regards,
Paramesh.

It's possible the RAM you bought is "registered", meaning it requires a special mobo to read it. However it just sounds like your computer isn't able to cope w/ 1GB sticks. Does the documentation for your computer state how much memory you can have?

Another thing is that the mobo may be non-standard. Compaq used to do that for a long time; you could only buy Compaq parts to uprgrade your system because they didn't use industry standard components.

The Tiger website should be able to answer most of your questions regarding compatibility and max capacity if you don't have the paperwork. You might be able to get a new BIOS to flash your system thereby allowing you to use the new memory.

I read the box that the computer came in and it says it has a D865GLC motherboard and a P4 3.0 processor. I went on the web and the motherboard supports up to four gig of ram. It also says it supports 333Mhz and 400Mhz but the computer box sent 333Mhz ram. Is it possible to move up to 400Mhz or does it depend on other equipment in the computer? It also said the memory to use has to be non-ECC.

I looked up the specs on your board and it also mentioned that it's dual-channel. Here's what Wikipedia says about dual-channel, FYI:
So, you need to be making sure that you're putting the memory in matching slots. Obviously you need to make sure your not using ECC memory.

You can put use 400MHz memory w/o changing anything in your system. I don't recall offhand if mixing the memory speeds will affect your system; it's possible that it will run at the slower memory speed or it might not boot. You can try it if you dare.

I also read that which makes what I saw strange. When I originally went to instal my new ram the two 512 ram sticks were together on the same side. But when I went to put them back the computer during boot up said there was a problem with the two sticks being together that they should be parallel. So I seperated them and put one in each of the first slot and everything went fine. So I think I have the dual channel thing right but I still don't understand how it came that way from the box and the computer never had a problem with it before. Also, the memory is non-ECC.