General Question about 2 RAM sticks

[dude21]

okay just a general question here.
when i bought my computer a few years back it came with a single 256mb DDR400 stick.
anyways i decided to upgrade it and bought a 512mb PC3200 which i think is also DDR400 stick by kingston.

at first i put both sticks together so i had 768mb. but it gave me BSODs.

so after a little thought i took out the 256 stick and no BSODs.
but now after some thought, it might be that i had not put the 256 stick in properly o_O

so my question is, can i put both sticks together, even though one is twice as big as the other, and they are both by different brands. ?

or should i just go and buy another 512 stick by kingston ?

thx

[Axephilic]

Sure you can. It sounds like you have dual-channel on and that won't work for you. Go into your BIOS and search for an option that says Dual-Channel (or similar) and set it to Off (or similar). Then try putting both sticks in and boot up.

Hope this helps,
Adam

[dude21]

okay will try
thx

[dude21]

okay just opened up my BIOS and found no setting whatsoever about dual channel or something similar.

i have the Pheonix-AwardBios v6.00PG BIOS

also in the user guide for my mobo, it says that i can put any combination i want (from 64mb to 1gb) o_O, oh and i only have 2 slots

[Axephilic]

It sounds like the 2 sticks are different speeds and you need to downclock the higher one to the lower one's speed. Could you post (as best as you can) the exact model and specs for both sticks of RAM.

[dude21]

okay one stick is a Pmi DDR400 256mb 3208GATA10-04A1
and the one in my case is a Kingston 512mb PC3200 DDR of course

[Axephilic]

Hi, I think this may be an issue with your RAM being bad. Follow these instructions in order:

1. Download MemTest from here.
2. Unzip it and put a blank floppy disk in the floppy drive.
3. Run the install.bat file from the extracted files.
4. Reboot your computer with the floppy in the drive and your computer should automatically boot from the floppy and the memtest will begin.

Let us know how it goes and if it returns any errors.

Thanks,
Adam