Stupid Gateway Won't accept any RAM

Ok, I'm working on a computer for a friend of mine. Its an older gateway Athlon 800. It only has 64mb ram (PC100), so i ordered another 256mb off the net. I got it in and BOOM, it won't boot. I check the ram in another system, but it works fine in there. I called gateway and they told me i need to buy Kingston ram (that is what they sell) its like 60 some buck for 256mb. I say ya right, and i trade the ram for some of my friends to see if it will work. It doesn't either, its giving me memory errors. Weird, becasue it works fine in this computer.

Any suggestions, or do you think i should just break down and buy what Gateway suggests....grrr i ate even having to call tech support, let a lone doing what they tell me to do

it is true that some manufacturers systems like certain kind/brand of memory modules. also find out what's the maximum amount of ram your system can take and per dimm slots. AMD K6-2 Aptiva for example, has two dimm slots and take upto 256MB of ram(2 x 128mb or less).

try crucial.com
they will probably sell RAM specifically for your system..
My old Dell had the same problem.

have you tried removing the 64mb stick, some systems do not like mixing memory