question about bios menu and RAM

[hawkeye_wx]

My system with a new motherboard is locking up and/or giving me a black screen with beeps while I'm in the bios menu. A bad stick of DDR could not be causing the problem, right? I have always thought the only components that could cause a problem like this in the bios menu would be the psu, cpu, video card, and motherboard.

My system:

Antec SmartPower 350W psu
Abit NF7-S v2.0
Palomino 1600+, no overclock
2 x 256MB Crucial DDR2100
GF3, slight overclock
Seagate hd
Plextor CDRW

 

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

Hmm, never quite saw that b4, although my board sometimes refuses to go into the setup. I will hit the del key and all I will get is a thin blue line across the bottom..e.g. only the bottom part of the setup prog is visible, and the rest of the screen is black.
That is when I practice all my cuss words, and hit the reset, and del till I get into the cmos.
I was just thinking, are you using an 8x vid card in a 4x agp slot?
I dunno if 8x vids are backward compatible with 4x boards.
Most boards will refuse to boot without SOME ram installed, so ram could very well be the prob.
Could be heat related also.
That is all I can think of 4 now, hope it helps

 

[hawkeye_wx]

My GeForce3 is a 4X AGP board and I have it set to 4X in the bios menu.

I do have 2 sticks of 256MB Crucial DDR2100 ram installed.

I was browsing the bios menu for 15 minutes before the problems started, and the cpu temp never got above 40C.