Help - Bad Memory or something else?

The system in question is:
1 ghz Pentium 3
ASUS CUV266 DDR motherboard
Radeon 7200
Sound Blaster Live 5.1

I was using a stick of AZEN brand pc2100 256MB DDR ram for one month, no problems. I used this ram to install windows XP.
Well today I had to return that stick of ram to the store (nothing wrong with it, another story).
I then bought one stick of "Kingston" pc2100 DDR, 512mb. I put it in, and to my surprise, right before you see the desktop/GUI of windows the system reboots!! It keeps doing this. If I shut the system off and turn it back on it gives me the options to boot into save mode, etc but still reboots at the same point regardless of safe mode or whatever i choose.
I then got the bad video card/video card memory beep code when I rebooted, so I changed card, no difference. Note this only happened once.,
So I try to reinstall Windows XP, thinking that it's fussing over the change of ram. Well the install process gets as far as the blue setup screen, but then goes blank (NO TEXT)...

Is my memory bad or something else? I seated the RAM properly. I tried using other slots. No luck... man after I spent all day running around to get this ram!!

At this point it certainly sounds like your memory is bad. If possible, increase the Vdimm a little and see if it boots into windows. It's also possible that the memory isn't compatible with your board. If you have another DDR system test the Kingston in there. It looks like you'll probably have to return the ram.

Try manually setting higher CAS & latency timings in BIOS. Seems quite a few folks are having problems with Kingston value ram running at its advertised speed.

Thanks, I think I fixed it.
I changed the System/SDRAM frequency ratio from 133/133 to 133/100. Got it working now.

Well that works, but you're only running it at 200Mhz instead of 266Mhz which is what it is rated for.

It's still not working properly. Nothing but problems now.
Sometimes it would boot into Windows, sometimes there would be no signal to the monitor, sometimes the image was all messed up and I couldn't do anything, sometimes it would go to the BIOS setup when the computer was turned on, sometimes I get the beep code for no RAM detected, etc.

I had to go into safe mode to do anything. From there I managed to install the driver for my new sound card. I had to uninstall all drivers for my Radeon 7200, otherwise It wouldn't boot into normal Windows. Once in non safe mode Windows, when I try to install my video card drivers, after I reboot I get no signal to the monitor. Before I installed the video card drivers, the system would often freeze up, or just reboot itself, or I would get a black screen (no signal).
It often froze when I tried to open a program, or click on one of those dumb Windows XP pop up bubbles that appear on the task bar.
I tried lowering my FSB from 133 to 128 or something, did nothing.

I purchased 512MB DDR off eBay weeks ago and am still waiting for its arrivial. It should be here in tomorrow's mail (I hope). I had no choice but to buy this ram and use it for the mean time.

Hopefully the stick of 512MB won't give me any problems.

FunkZ said:

Well that works, but you're only running it at 200Mhz instead of 266Mhz which is what it is rated for.

Click to expand...

I also tried increasing the CAS latency in the BIOS but they were already at the highest settings as detected by the motherboard. (high as I could put them in manual mode also).