my cousin has a compaq presario 5wv254 with windows xp sp2 installed on an upgraded 45 gig hard drive. it had 320mb ram in it. i was planning on upgrading it to 768mb, the max supported ram. it had 1 64mb stick and 2 128mb sticks in it. it's SDRAM 168pin. the 64 mb is pc100 and the 2 other sticks are pc133. i bought a working 512mb stick off ebay, the same as the others. i snapped out the 64mb one and put in the 512 mb one in the first slot, with the other 128mb sticks still it. when i booted up it said i only had 256mb ram and it displayed a 164 error, which is incorrect memory config. it booted up into windows xp, displayed the desktop image, and said windows needed to be reactivated. i reactivated it no prob, went into my computer properties and it said i only have 256 mb ram. i turned it off and took out the 128 mb sticks, and now the monitor wouldn't start. i put the original ram back in its correct slots, and it still has the error, but now it doesn't show one of the 128mb ones. however, when i run the BIOS it shows i have 320 mb of ram, and so does hwINFO. well, come to find out, this computer only supports 256mb per slot
. when i had to reactivate windows, it said something about a major hardware change. i don't have any documentation as i got it from my cousins that live in Virginia, and i wasn't the one that put in the old ram and graphics card(which has nothing to do with this problem) please any help would be greatly appreciated. this computer makes me mad
(All SIMMs in one bank had to be the same, one bank had to have the bigger-capacity SIMMS and if you put the bigger ones in the other bank the computer would think every SIMM is the smaller size, always but always install in matching pairs, hell on the Mac Plus you had to cut a resistor off the motherboard if you wanted to use 4MB of RAM in it!)