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Posted By : Jerry of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on December 16, 2004

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I'm working on 2 Dell machines: one is a Dimension 2200 and the other is Dimension L800 CXE, both are running Celerons (1300 and 800 respectively).

I bought 2 128 MB 133 Mhz chips from NewEgg, one for each machine, to boost the RAM from 128 to 256 MB. Both machines are getting very strange errors:

The 2200 (running XP Home SP1) loads into windows and when the "Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE To Begin" screen comes up, it displays a distorted version of the Dell splash screen (the first thing you see on boot) and then it just stops doing anything.

The L800CXE gets to the log in screen (it's running Win98 SE) and hangs for a few seconds (different each time) and then when you hit the keys the screen flickers until the machine reboots itself.

Both machines see the RAM in the BIOS and they both see the appropriate new amount. What is going wrong?

The RAM is Viking 128MB 133 Mhz SDRAM. I've swapped out the RAM with other chips and it seems that these two Viking Chips don't work in either of these machines. I had success with one of the Viking chips in a third machine, which is also a Dell, but these two just aren't doin' it. Please help. Thanks.

This question was answered on December 16, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Download and run Everest Home Edition This free utility will give you detailed info on each of your RAM modules Did you attempt to determine the type of memory required by Dell for these machines? Find Everest here: http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en

In everest click motherboard> SPD This should give you the exact description of the memory Dell can be fussy about RAM The type of ram has to match but the timings may also be an issue.

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Posted by Jerry of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on December 16, 2004

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