PC-66 RAM acting funny.. GPF in Windows..

[oxOGradiusOxo]

I just bought a stick of PC-66 RAM (32MB) from a friend, installed it, and tried to boot into Windows98. BIOS recognized the ram (total of 96MB now, 2 other 32MB chips) but when windows starts to boot, I get a general protection fault error, and it tells me to restart my computer. What's the problem?

[awwall]

Have you tried removing the new ram and see if the problem goes away?

If it does, you might try it alone, removing your 2 known good sdrams. If the problem comes back, I would say you have some bad ram. If it seems to work, try installing your other ram, 1 at a time and see what happens. Might work in a different slot.

good luck

[Vampiel]

Same reply here, try them 1 at a time, if it doesnt work then you have bad ram, general protection fault sounds like you prob. do.

[oxOGradiusOxo]

Sounds like a plan.

I bought the RAM from Chad174 on this message board. He swears the RAM worked fine on his computer, and shouldn't be bad. I'm taking his word for it. I'll try what you said and see what happens.

THANKS

[oxOGradiusOxo]

Well, I tried everything. Here are the results.
I put the 32MBPC66 stick alone in..

SIMM1 = Windows protection error. Please restart your computer.
SIMM2 = While initializing VCACHE. Windows protection error...
SIMM3 = Windows protection error...

When I tried the chip with other sticks I had, I got similar results and messages. Sometimes the VCACHE would read something like "VCD32" etc.
I also had the idea to try it in my other spare scrap system. Same errors except BIOS never recognized it.

More suggestions?

[Nathan]

Here's a long shot. Try renaming smartdrv.exe (that's if it's on the hard drive). It has solved so many problems that we were having that we are putting it up in the login script so it'll delete it automatically when the user logs in to the network.

[Vampiel]

Wait a second, my friend had that problem a while back I remember, I think it was something in BIOS, but not sure, if you havent fixed it by the time I ask him how he fixed it, ill post it, just tell me if I dont need to.

[Ygor]

Ummm, don't simms have to be installed in pairs?

[This message has been edited by Ygor (edited 10-08-99).]

[oxOGradiusOxo]

Oops, my mistake everyone. DIMM not SIMM, I don't know what I was thinking.

Yeah, it does seem like the RAM is bad. I'll have to contact the guy I bought it from so that I can return it.

Thanks for the help!

[awwall]

In my previous post, I assumed it was SDRAM that was being used here. If SIMMS are being used YGOR is correct, must be in pairs.

If these are SDRAMS then it sounds to me, from what has been said, that the SRDRAM is indeed bad. Should be able to use just one SDRAM to boot on. If you can boot on any of the other 2 and this one won't, then sounds like a no-brainer to me.