Memory Upgrade to Use Win7 is causes Machine to be Unstable.

[dw85745]

I am trying to upgrade my box to use Win7.
Older PC using MOBO -- Soyo SY-K7VYA-Pro -- which I built years ago.
MOBO --supposedly -- will handle up to 1.5 GB of SDRAM (100/133) in various configurations.
Currently config of three 256K sticks running WinXP unit has been stable for years.
Anything over 1 Gig and Machine has intermittent blue screen and latest Firefox upgrade (28.0) is ONLY program that crashes. At 768K and recent test with 512K machine and Firefox stable.

Started with 1.5GB (three 512 sticks), and as stated Firefox 28.0 (upgrade prior to memory upgrade) kept crashing.
Then ran MEMTEST86+ v5.01 (all sticks in) and received errors. Removed two of the sticks (down to 512) and MEMTEST86 on first stick failed -- removed stick. Inserted another and MEMTEST said 512K stick OK.
Ran machine with the one 512K stick for a day and everything stable including Firefox.

Put in a second stick of 512K (Machine at 1GB), ran MEMTEST86 and failed.
Removed that stick and put in another (Machine still at 1GB), ran MEMTEST86, and again failed.
Removed that stick and put in two of the original 256K sticks along with the 512K good stick, ran MEMTEST 86 and again failed.
With the last configuration Firefox again unstable and received 1 blue screen.

Removed the 512K stick, put back the last original 256K stick (now at 768K), so could post this forum, and both machine and Firefox are stable.

Any ideas appreciated.

[dilettante]

The new RAM may be out of spec for the board, i.e. just on the edge of too fast for the memory controller used. Maybe PC100 RAM would work reliably but not PC133 or perhaps one of the other more detailed RAM timing specs is a mismatch.

In any case the experience would probably be awful using such ancient hardware, and 1.5GB of RAM would be poor even for 32-bit Win7.

[dw85745]

Just trying to get this thing up and going while I have time to shop around for something new.
And Yes I know M$ has announced for some time that XP was ending. No excuses just had a nice stable system with no problems and didn't want to mess with it.
Just set bios to default, pulled battery just in case maybe something in BIOS that needed clearing.
So far, so good but need a day or two to confirm.

Thanks for taking your time to reply.
David

[Nightwalker83]

I was thinking it could be probably with one of the sticks of memory.

[Lord Orwell]

just a thought but sometimes WHERE you put the ram matters also. Your motherboard may support that single 512 chip anywhere but if you want to install two of them it may want them in specific slots. Try starting two sticks from the other side, or read your motherboard manual on the ram install instructions.

[Lord Orwell]

i just checked out the manual. That's an overclocker's board. Is it possible you had a mild overclock originally before you reset the bios? that board by default has the dram timing tied to the speed of the front-side bus (but it can be uncoupled). If this is the case you may have been overclocking the ram.