Pavilion RAM upgrade on NARRA3 (mystery) ASUS Motherboard

[ami-florida]

Haaaaalp...please. (-: 

Running an HP-Pavilion with the catchy product name KJ396AA-ABA m8457c (bought off the shelf at Sam's Club).  Slow on Vista and still slow on Win 7. I do a lot of graphics so time for upgrades.

Installed NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 and 500W power supply.

Now trying to upgrade RAM to finish icing the cake. Had 4 x 1G. Crucial memory test said I can install up to 4 x 2G. DDR2-PC6400, 400Mhz. Hit the bank again and bought 4 matched 2G chips from PNY. All trouble since then.

Bizarre booting events, super slow booting, programs now incompatible, system slowdowns...OR it acts normal for XX minutes before collapsing with Blue screen of Death.

ASUS Motherboard is NARRA3, Ver 3.02 with a AM2+ (940) socket.. Thought it could be a BIOS problem since it's ancient (Phoenix 5.11 4/15/2008)...but ASUS and the ASUS motherboard analysis app have never heard of this board! HP offers no downloads other than some DVD driver. HP *does* state that my 64-bit OS can support 2G x 4 of RAM in their memory FAQ.

Using Gabriel Topala's System Info for Windows (Great stuff!) and ONLY there do I see on motherboard properties

"Slots = 4

Max module = 1024

Max capacity = 4096

But he also says "Accuracy of DMI data cannot be guaranteed"

So. What's the truth here? Obviously my system is not liking 2G x4 at all. But would ASUS and HP ***really*** have sold a "Media Center" 64-bit PC that could only take 4 x 1G of RAM?

Fingers crossed someone can help. Meanwhile, I'm pulling the modules and going back to 4 x 1G. Slow...but stable.

[Ron Silver_1]

This Doc. says 8 GB.   http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01420087&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en...  I have had good results with www.crucial.com  If you search there site this page comes up.   http://www.crucial.com/search/searchresults.aspx?keywords=m8457c    I would gues that you have some not compatible memory. I would try clearing the BIOS as shown on the bottom of this page.    http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01357135&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en...   and then enter Setup and make sure that the menory is correct there and then save changes. If you still have problems I think you have some memory that is defective /not compatable

[ami-florida]

Thank you Ron. I did the Crucial scan (attached) before I even ordered memory. It says I'm good to go with 2GB per slot. It was the SIW software that said 1GB per slot.

Another friend suggested "memory incompatibility" but that seems like a stretch.

This is brand new, highly rated, meat and potatoes PNY memory  Nothing fancy. But the clincher is that when I popped it in my $300 HP cheapo backup computer (9 months older than this one)...it works perfectly. I guess it's possible that it's "incompatible"  but that really seems odd. The memory, the size and my computer are all pretty middle of the road.

Clearing the BIOS scares me. Never done it before and don't want to try.

I *did* put the computer in set-up mode when trying to solve this before. Not only did my system see the 2GB X 4 memory perfectly, I even ran the really-long-and-boring memory test on all four sticks. They pass with flying colors.

So I remain baffled...and convinced there is some simple solution that I'm missing.

[Ron Silver_1]

Are all 4 DIMMS the same date codes. I would question if it is trulycompatible I have seen a lot of strange things happen with some brands of memory that is why I recommened the Crucial. I had one machine not an HP the memory DIMMS were the same specs but were different brands but it wouldn't load windows but it was OK in setup. That is why I think it might be related to not being compatible.

[ami-florida]

The 4 RAM chips were in 2 new blister packs and I kept the pairs together. Like I said, I put the PNY in my other computer (which wasn't really worth 8GB of RAM!) and it worked fine.

I may just shell out the extra $30 for the 8G of Crucial memory ($200 instead of $170)...if that didn't work at least I'd have their test to prove it for a refund. Thank you for your help!

[Ron Silver_1]

It has been my experience that there RAM works when others don't. The problem with the Blister packs is that it may not all be the same lot or may be a little different in speed and it won't work. They used to check it in each different machine. You were lucky The other brands that I have found around here has usually been more than Crucial. Memory is a commodity and the price will change drastically with time I bought a couple of kits for a machine in Oct. 2009 and it was $88 I bought the same for another similar machine a month ago and it was $120