Dead Crucial Stick

Hi, I have a 512MB stick of PC2100 non-ECC Crucial RAM, it's been working fine for about a month, but just a few days ago, I've been getting a lot of corruption and weird crashes. I run my system with another stick of 256MB OEM Micron PC2100, alongside the Crucial,

Now, whenever I try to use both sticks at once, the system won't get past the OS loader screen. When I use only the 256MB OEM Micron, my computer boots into Windows 2000 fine. If I try to boot with only the Crucila stick installed, no matter which mem slot, the system will not boot. The weird thing is, the motherboard does not even POST, no beep codes (Soyo Dragon Plus). If I remove the stick of RAM and try to power on with no RAM, it makes the one long beep meaning faulty/missing RAM.

Does this mean the Crucial stick has gone defective? I have not overclocked it ever. Would this be likely covered by their limited lifetime warranty? And, if anyone has ever dealt with RMAs with Crucial, would you have any tips to ensure the process goes smoothly?

Thanks in advance.

Sure. Call them with your order number and explain what's up. They are among the friendliest and easiest of online memory vendors to work with on RMA issues. They are the only ones who come close to Mushkin in that department, IMHO. I had a stick of PC2100 get fried by a bad dimm slot--one of the little retainers in the slot came loose and got pushed to the contact point and it literally blew a crater in the leads. Ironically, a RMA board for the first one did exactly the same thing with a brand-new stick of Mushkin PC2700. Two boards and two separate sticks of memory fried without so much as a beep tone. Both companies were super gracious and sympathetic when I told them what happened. Good Luck. Remember, if you ask them (but you have to ask) they will email you a Fedex return shipping label to print and use so you're not out any shipping money to RMA the stick.

I forgot, you will probably end up explaining the situation to someone in their tech support department (also excellent) to see if they have any more ideas before they issue an RMA. They'll cross-ship, billing your card and then crediting it once they get your stick.

Yakbak, Hi. Sounds like the stick has gone bad. If the board wont boot with that stick but runs fine with another without any other changes then I would blame the stick. Crucial is about the most reliable brand I have ever used but nothing in this world is 100%.

Here is the link to Crucial customer support. They have an option to chat with a tech and is probably where I would start. They will probably tell you how to rma and such. Good luck.

That's pretty much exactly what happened to me and my 256 meg reg. ECC Crucial stick. One month of reliable service, and then it went down the drain over about a two day period. Eventually, attempting to use said DIMM resulted in failure to produce a video signal (or beep) every single time.

I still haven't called them up about it, even though running a dually on 128 megs should reasonably cause supernatural forces to come point and laugh... I thought that my motherboard might have been a fire-breathing RAM-wrecker, so I didn't want get the Crucial stick replaced only to fry the new one. That was three or four months ago, though, and the Kingston stick I'm using already had a year (of mostly uptime) on its little clock.

So I really ought to call Crucial, having been inspired by the reports that they are, like, all helpful, and stuff.

Crucial has a great CSDept.I have never had a problem dealing with them just returned a stick that wasnt working and recieved another one right away.JS

Yak, be sure that you tell them that you live in Canada, and make sure they know to put instructions for Customs, so you don't have to pay duty.I just got stung with the same thing with Crucial.And to top it off, the ram i got back was single sided, instead of double sided like the stick i rma'd.It won't run past 139mhz(pc2100).

The tech on the phone mentioned the customs fees, so I asked if they could ship it to the previous owner, and he could ship it to me as a tax-exempt gift.

I wasn't sure if a company could avoid the customs fee legally...