No sticks are not bad, they came working from my other dell, think it must be bios wont take them, as i said earlier after your advice went to try adjust the max mem in win 7 and just would not go to 4096 and if u type it in when u click save just goes back 2048, run out of ideas lol- time for a new machine, 2 gig is ok for the time just annoying cant use this ram