Question

Blank monitor screen after installing new RAM hardware

Asked by: BrandonHeat

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY COMPUTER SPECS:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PC Model
Packard Bell iMedia 3082
http://support.packardbell.com/uk/item/index.php?pn=P842017801&g=1400

MOTHERBOARD:
Cooper PDI (P4R800VM)
http://support.packardbell.com/uk/item/index.php?i=spec_cooper&ppn=P842017801

Intel P4 2.8GHz
Cooper PDI (P4R800VM):
                                       Currently Installed: 2x  Infineon 256 MB DDR400 CL3
                                       2x DDR400 SDRAM Dual Channel Support Slots
Ati 9100 IGP onboard graphics:
                                      16 MB to 128 MB of main memory configurable as display memory
120GB ATA HDD
20GB ATA HDD
DVD-RW

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi

 I recently bought 2 of these Transcend DDR400 RAM modules from Ebay
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1GB-1G-PC-3200-DDR-400-DDR-400Mhz-MEMORY-RAM-MODULE-NEW_W0QQitemZ290359993851QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_ComputerComponents_MemoryRAM_JN?hash=item439acde5fb

Another site that sells them:
http://www.memoryc.com/computermemory/ddrram/1gbtranscendpc3200cl3desktop.html

I even did a Crucial Scan to check if they would be compatible:
http://www.crucial.com/uk/systemscanner/viewscanbyid.aspx?id=A41777D931D926C3

They seemed perfectly compatible with my computer,  being:
+DDR400
+Low Density (64 x 8)
+ CL3
+ and Branded too.

I installed them, taking extra care about static discharge, I didn't push them too hard into the sockets, took out the power socket beforehand and STILL i got problems.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PROBLEM:
My monitor just remains BLANK, with the Computer booting *apparently* as normal. It looks as if there's no signal being sent through the VGA port.
When I reinstall my old 256MB everything works perfectly and my Monitor is up and running again
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

~I was thinking maybe it has something to do with myPower Supply Unit, i mean after all, i do have 2 Hard Drives installed. I doubt this very much though bcos I have an ATX400 400watt PSU. That should provide plenty
[[## Could this be a power issue? ##]]

~OR it could be that the system isn't recognising the memory for some reason and hence the 125MB integrated onboard graphics chipset hasn't enough memory to function?
[[## If so, why is my pc not detecting the RAM memories? and how to resolve? ##]]

~Im thinking maybe theres a bad BIOS setting eg voltage. I DO have a graphics card lying around -
[[## could installing my graphics card give me access to BIOS settings? Could it be a BIOS issue? ##]]

The RAM modules look like they're in perfect condition, arrived in very nice padded packaging (although in a plastic sealing bag rather than antistatic foil, but I doubt this is highly unusual), so I doubt they're damaged.

I don't know everything about computers so please break it down for me! and PLEASE ANSWER ALL 3 POINTS.

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH.

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2009-10-16 at 13:33:40ID24819353
Tags

blank monitor screen RAM memory hardware ddr400 DDR

,

blank

,

monitor

,

screen

,

RAM

,

memory

,

hardware

,

upgrade

,

ddr

Topics

Computer Memory (RAM)

,

Video Cards

,

Computer Displays / Monitors

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
10

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. SDRAM
    1) Can a 100MHz motherboard use 66Mhz SDRAM? 2) How can I tell if I have 66Mhz or 100Mhz SDRAM if I do not know what kind of motherboard I have? Any designation on the chip itself? 3) Are all Pentium Motherboards(P-66 to P-300) ( Not Pentium II) 66Mhz?
  2. Did a new SDRAM stick kill 2 motherboards?
    I installed a cheap 512MB SDRAM stick into my computer alongside an old 256MB one, and on the first boot the BIOS only reported finding 512MB of RAM - not the 768MB as expected. I assumed that the old stick was slower, and it was only using the faster one. Booting into Wind...

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: Donald_GibsonPosted on 2009-10-16 at 14:00:19ID: 25593302

First thing you need to ask yourself when troubleshooting is: What changed?  We both know this one so lets move on.

2nd - We know that it's the RAM.  Is the RAM that you are installing in your computer good?  What happens when You install one stick?  Is the RAM supported  by the motherboard?

If you know your RAM is good and that your motherboard supports it my next question would be power?  Unplug something that you dont need and see if it works?  IE: CDROM drive, Extra Hard Drive whatever.

Next step would be to  try and update you BIOS and firmware.

I would not waste your time installing the other graphic card.

Hope this helps,
-Don

 

by: BrandonHeatPosted on 2009-10-16 at 15:36:10ID: 25593845

Thanks Donald,

Yes I did try putting in only 1 stick at a time (in the slot closest to cpu) and still nothing changed. Monitor was still blank, and cpu was booting up.

I can't really check if my RAM is good because I have no other working systems and I can't use memtest86 because of this very monitor issue! Its really frustrating lol
As far as I can tell, physically though, it  looks perfect.

Im not quite experienced enough to update te BIOS or Firmware and i've been told it could go horribly wrong so I haven't even thought about that really. Is there a simple way to do it?

Cheers

 

by: BrandonHeatPosted on 2009-10-16 at 18:24:55ID: 25594413

Donald,

I think you *may* have solved this mystery. I checked the manufacturers website and looked at the revisions to the BIOS versions and noticed an amendment to memory module compatabilities!
http://support.packardbell.com/uk/item/index.php?i=instr_releasenotes_bios_cooper&ppn=P842017801k

I'll be trying my first ever BIOS flash so wish me luck!

 

by: BrandonHeatPosted on 2009-10-16 at 23:19:10ID: 25594964

Donald, you're a genius.

I flashed my BIOS and inserted the two RAM sticks and everything was running like clockwork.

HOWEVER, I'm now getting some very scary messages:

Firstly, I would get visual glitches even when simply in files explorer.
Soon afterwards, I would get this message:

"VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands"

Then eventually I would get a terrible blue screen message which is all written (typed by me!) in the attached text file.

What on earth is going on? Please help!

(I suspect the RAM is faulty so I running memtest86 as I type this on a laptop.)

 

by: nobusPosted on 2009-10-17 at 00:25:31ID: 25595110

CPTWGU.sys   seems the culprit; can you disable teh lan , or wireless in the bios for a test ?
now it's running, i suggest to run a ram test; use memtest86+ from www.memtest.org

 

by: BrandonHeatPosted on 2009-10-17 at 11:05:12ID: 25596755

Ok CPTWGU is my TalkTalk wireless USB device software related driver of some sort.
I really doubt this is the issue, but what I did was to uninstall my Avast anti virus software which stiopped that specific message displaying.

It didn't stop the BSOD though, so I decided to run the memtest86 through last night and I got something like 229 errors in 11 passes (88 tests).
Thats an enormous amount and they were all within the first 1024.5MB of RAM so obviously, because I only have 2 RAMs of 1Gb I thought the first (closest to cpu) was suspect.

I took it out and put the other one in that slot. But that didnt work.
So I thought maybe its this one thats faulty so I put the one I just removed back in that slot and kept the other one out. Even this caused a BSOD (although delayed)
So it turned out both RAMs caused the BSOD in slot1.

So finally, I decided to try it in slot2 only. This is what I am running right now! And there hasnt been an error for 30mins! (touch wood).
So it looks like  I can only have a single 1GB module, and ONLY in slot 2, the slot furthest from the cpu??
This doesn't make sense to me first of all bcos I thought slot1 was the main slot and secondly I KNOW for a fact that slot1 works because I had two working 256MB sticks in simultaneously before this.

This boggled my mind so I checked the net for things that might cause some issues and came accross things like low/high density and single/double sided RAM.

Well, i'm 99% sure my new RAMs are low density (128x64) but I I think they might be double sided.
But then I thought all RAMs were double sided, until of course I looked at my original ones.
They only have the black squares on ONE SIDE whilst the new ones have them on both.

Do you think this may be the problem? Im not sure single sided 1gb RAMs even exist! Ive never seen them! The crucial website doesn't even specify this so surely it can't be that important could it?

 

by: nobusPosted on 2009-10-17 at 23:39:43ID: 25598942

in memtest - you are supposed to get 0 errors !
>>   I thought slot1 was the main slot <<<  No, they are the same, just the adressing is1 bit off
>>  and secondly I KNOW for a fact that slot1 works because I had two working 256MB sticks in simultaneously before this.   <<   can you still testt that?   i suppose they won't work either; it looks like 1 slot got bad
you can inspect and clean it

since the ram runs in slot 2 - this shows they do work with your board !

 

by: Donald_GibsonPosted on 2009-10-18 at 07:00:30ID: 25599877

Do you have another computer onsite where you can switch the RAM with?  My gut tells me to tell you to replace both sticks of RAM and get new ones.  Double check when you get the new RAM that it is the correct kind.

Good Luck, Nobus!

 

by: BrandonHeatPosted on 2009-10-18 at 10:32:04ID: 25600602

Thanks for replying guys, the slot2 1gb stick is still running without problems!

Nobus:
I can't think of any reason for slot 1 to have become damaged. I was using 2 25mb slots literally 20mins before this issue. Do you think it might be because of a bit of dust? My system is very dusty but Im too afraid to clean it (cant find canned-air anywhere). Would blowing the slot solve this?

Don: ONE of them is working in slot2 (im too scared to try the other one just in case it corrupts the slot). Brandon

Cheers

 

by: nobusPosted on 2009-10-18 at 23:15:55ID: 25602879

yes clean the whole system from dust; you can use canned air for that
and yes - it may be the reason !
did you test with the 256 mb sticks ?  does not take long !

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...