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| | | New Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 7/31/2008 10:46 AM
Posts: 42, Visits: 84 |
| I duel boot Vista Home Premium behind XP Media Center Edition on a laptop. I have 2 RAM slots and the mother board will support up to 4 gigs of RAM (now why anyone would put 4g RAM on a 32bit system, I don't know). I finally found a 2gig RAM stick (DDR2 5300) for about $60 USD). So, I took out one of my 1g sticks and added the 2g. And here is where the problems start.
Booting with just the 2g stick, in any slot, works fine. I get the boot menu and can choose which OS to boot into. But when I add back a 1g stick (total of 3gigs), I get no boot menu. XP is set as the default OS, and I can see the progression bar scrolling by (only 4 times, before it was 15 - 20 times), then just a blank screen. I hear the piano lick that tells you Windows is loading, but I see nothing. I don't even see the mouse arrow. I get no Desktop. I've left the laptop running overnight, just to wake up to a blank screen and no Windows Desktop. No matter which slot the 2g stick is inserted and the 1g stick (I've also switched between the 1g sticks) is inserted. XP has no visual effects. The Intel Bios is up to date. the 3gig's are showing up in the Bios. When I hit F8 to enter a menu for Safe Mode, again, I see nothing, all I see is a black screen. I don't even see the flashing 'underscore'.
Now here is the kicker: When I boot and I think that Startup is on the boot screen (although I can't see anything), I press the arrow down key (to select the other OS) and hit the Enter Key, and Windows will boot into Vista HP as slick as wet glass. In fact, the 3 gigs of RAM makes my Vista respond almost as fast as my instance of XP on the same laptop. I go to the computer properties dialog box and see that all 3 gigs show up and all 3 gigs also benchmark at 100%.
In order to see the boot menu, (note: with only 2g RAM installed, I can see the boot screen, but with 3g installed, not only do I NOT see the boot screen, but the only part of Windows XP I see is the progression bar scrolling and that is it), I have tried VistaBootPro. I've tried the 'force install' feature in VistaBootPro. It works fine with 2g installed. With 3g's, I know the boot screen is there, but I can't see it. With 3g installed, I can't see XP at all, and can't even boot into safemode.
Can someone please help me. Why does Vista work like a mule on 3g RAM, but XP will not even show itself when booting up an extra 1g of RAM (total of 3). Why can't I see the boot screen using 3gigs, but all is as normal using 2 gigs, but most of all, how do I resolvetese issues? Please help, if you can
Regards:
The Away Team |
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