Hey all, I just registered to these forums, I know some about computers but not experts like alot of you are, I thought maybe I could find some help here. Ok, I use a P3 866 Mhz computer the motherboard only has 2 ram slots, there used to be a 128mb stick in each slot, but I wanted to upgrade so I bought a stick of 256 and put it in the 2nd slot, and then I put the remaining 128 stick in the first slot, but when I power on my PC I get 3 beeps a short beep a long beep and a short beep and a keyboard light flashes on and off, now my pc only works when nothing is in that first RAM slot, so im stuckw ith 256 :/ any ideas? ive tried putting different rtypes of ram in the first slot I even took the 256 stick out of second slot and put it in first slot without anything in second slot, same problem it seems whenever anything is in that slot my pc wont start up, ive been going mad plz help !

are all the sticks of ram the same speed?

um, i belive so, but i mean, nothing works in that first slot, even if i only use one stick and put it in first slot, i get the beep thing

have you tried updating to the latest chipset drivers or bios? i wouldnt recommend flashing the bios if you dont know how, so save that for a last resort.

im not sure how to update, I bought this PC wholesale so it didnt come with any guides or anything

do you know what chipset the board uses? i think an intel 815. do you know the make and model of your motherboard?

Me reckons ur computer is defected. :suspiciou

yes snowman, intel 815, and no i dont think my pc is defective

Try the RAM in another PC. Also make sure the RAM is the correct FSB speed for your motherboard. For example is it 100 or 133mhz RAM? Or is it 2100 or above? Without looking into it I am pretty sure your motherboard supports 100 and 133mhz RAM, so make sure the new RAM is 100 or 133. Again, try it in another PC if at all possible.

I'm sure there is nothing wrong with your PC. The other RAM works fine so your MB is most likely fine. The problem lies in the RAM that doesn't work on your board.

no no no, listen, i can take the 256 stick im usaing right now and put it in the first slot and i get that triple beep thing, its like my whole pc doesnt work if anythings in that first slot , dang i hope i find the answer some day

Ok, I see (sorry about missing that I was browsing in a hurry). One more thing, you might want to try and get ahold of another stick of RAM (other than those two) and install only that stick and see what happens. Possibly a stick of 100mhz RAM.

Other than that maybe you can return the stick of RAM that you bought and get a larger stick (so that you dont have to use both to get that amount of RAM). Most likely you can't return it but I just thought I would suggest doing that.

In this case it is possible that slot is defective unfortunately.

exactly what i didnt wanna hear well, thx for the help guys, maybe somewhere out there a stick of 512 SDRAM exists or even 1024 SDRAM since my motherboard cant do ddr i dont think

What chipset if your motherboard based on ? If it's a 440bx chipset, you're going to have a lot of problems getting more then 256mb to work on it.

Think you all missed one thing that far as I know has not changed... All memory in the slots need to be the SAME size. Can not mix 128 and 256 size memory -- can be 2x 128 or 2x 256 -- not 128 & 256 -- speed is not normaly the problem... will run and the speed of the slowest chip.

Uh, that is not the case, unless it's a special issue with the i815 chipset. I have a Duron 800 machine w/ a KT133 chipset, with 2 64M sticks and one 32M stick of RAM in, and it works fine.

That was true 10 years ago when a stick was only a half bank (32bits wide, but 64bit address bus, so you needed to have a full bank for the cpu to communicate with the memory properly). Since the advent of SDRAM, that has not been true at all.

How old is the PC

Mind if I ask when you bought this PC? If it were a while ago, you may be better off just buying a new mobo if the slot is bad...just a suggestion...