Upgraded rambus and killed my machine!

[wildirish]

I have a Dell 1.3ghz Dimension that came with 2 64mb RDRam chips and two continuity boards. My loving and attentive son purchased a game that not only requires a different operating system (XP vs ME), but also needs 265mb of ram. Sooooooooo....long story short, $99 for XP and $150 for 2 128mb RDRam chips later, the machine won't boot.

I installed XP succesfully before putting the ram in. I unplugged the machine, wore my anti-static strap and put both new ram chips in. I had removed the old ram and continuity boards to bring with me to show the guys at comp-usa because I was paranoid of getting the wrong ram. When I put the new ram in, and the cont. boards back in, I turned on the box...and it wouldn't boot. I tried booting from the cd...nothing. No safe mode, no nothing. I took out the new ram and put the two old ones in and got the same thing...nothing. The fan still runs and I hear the hard drive spinning, but no boot.

Someone suggested I reset the cmos using the jumper, but I couldn't even find the jumper! I pulled the battery for a few minutes while the machine was unplugged, but when it was all back together again...same story.

My concern is that the new ram fried the motherboard. It says 800mhz on it. Is it possible that this is the wrong rdram for the machine? And if so...would this kill my box? Where do I go from here, and please tell me it won't cost me anything because my wife is already miserable at having dumped $250 so that he can play his $30 game that he bought without looking at the "System Requirements" notes.

 

[LipsOfVenom]

sounds like your RAM slots are faulty now, since none of your RAM (old or new) will make the computer boot...which means.....new motherboard hehe...so ...unfortunately that means you will spend more money...i do hope i am wrong though...cuz i also hate buying so many things...to play $50 games....how did they get faulty...well shorting is a very popular response...but in reality static electricity and shorting are very uncommon causes of motherboard defects nowadays because so many ppl know to ground themselves.....i suppose that removing and replacing your memory caused some sort of damage...can't be 100% sure though...best of luck

 

[iss]

if you recently bought the RDRam then it is probably 40ns 800 mhz ram. the RDRam you have isntalled is probably 45ns 800 mhz ram. you cannot mix the two and older mobos dont all support the newer 40ns RDRam.

Your machine is probably not dead but rather suffering a "lockup". older dell systems are notorious for this happening when adding or removing hardware components. what you have to do is.

unplug the computer and hold in the power on button for several seconds to drain any residual power. then strip everything from the mobo excep the Processor, ie; remove all ram, video cards, sound cards, etc and un;pug the power AND the IDE cables fromt he hard drive and from your optical drives. with just the Processor installed plug the computer in and power up, you wont get boot up but you may get beeps. then dhutdown and repeat the first step and then add the ram, again power up, you should by then be hearing beeps ( which meansit is trying to post) add each component you removed one by one using this process until everything is reinstalled and it boots.

 

[wildirish]

If the mobo doesn't support the new ram and tripped something, is there something I need to do to reset it with the old ram in? Or is it possible the new ram fried it? I've seen so many different posts, but most simply say "if it's the wrong ram, the machine won't boot up with it...get the right ram".

 

[iss]

if your mobo doesnt support the new ram itisnt going to boot with it. but you should be able to get it back running using the old ram using the process I outlined in my above post. if your mobo does support the new ram then you can use it but not in conjunction with the old ram.

 

[Jaquio]

Yeah... mixing them it causing the chaos... hope so... LOL