Question I have a older computer, ASUS MB, A8N-VM

[charles e miller]

I have 4 sticks of 1 Gb of ram, Apparently 1 Stick has gone bad, Computer is telling me I have only 3 Gb. I bought 2 sticks of 2Gb ram by mistake, can I pull the single sticks out and put in the 2 Gb sticks instead, the slots are colored blue and black, 2 blue and 2 black, would I need to use certain slots.

 

[Wolfshadw]

ASUS A8N-VM Motherboard Manual

Pg. 1-10 shows how RAM needs to be configured.
Channel 1 - Right-most Blue slot paired with the right-most Black slot
Channel 2 - Left-most Blue slot paired with the left-most Black slot.

Your 2x2GB RAM may not work as the specifications page states your board only supports 4x1GB RAM modules.

-Wolf sends

 

[charles e miller]

Thanks Wolf, Guess I will get some singles, This computer is I believe 8 or 9 years old, Ive had to buy a network board due to on-board went bad, and a sound board, and a video board, But Im keeping it running, kinda like keeping an old car going, oh replaced a power supply also, and a hard drive. Also CD player is also starting to go south, but I dont use it much anyway. Guess I will buy 1 stick of 1Gb, and just swap out till I find the bad one.
Again Thanks.

 

[Wolfshadw]

You should probably test each slot with a single 1GB RAM module you already have to make sure it's a bad RAM module and not a failed RAM slot.

-Wolf sends

 

[cryoburner]

Is this system running a 32-bit version of Windows? If so, it's likely that it won't be able to utilize a full 4GB of RAM, since the address space will be limited to 4GB, and some of that will be reserved for hardware. Even with 4GB installed, it's common that the RAM available to the OS might not be much more than 3GB. And in 32-bit Windows XP, each program will only be able to access 2GB of that anyway.

Have you tried testing the RAM sticks one at a time to see whether one of them isn't working properly?

 

[charles e miller]

Yes, 32 Bit, Windows 7. When I added 2 1Gb sticks, a few years ago, When I clicked My Computer it came back as having 4 Gb Ram, Now Its reading 3 Gb of ram. And it seems like the computer kinda gets weird ever once in a while. I ordered 4 1 Gb sticks today, 19.00 shipped. when did memory get so cheap. I was going to update the bios off the ASUS site, and they didnt even have the board listed. Wonder if I can get a antique tag for this computer. Oh forget it has a couple of inop USB ports also(lighting strike)
No I havent tried testing the ram, hope its the ram and not the slot !. anyway it still plays videos great, its just a internet machine. I need to take out to the shop and blow it out, the CPU cooler fins are completely full of dust (packed).

 

[Wolfshadw]

If the HSF fins are caked full of dust and grime, I use a combination of canned air and a soft-bristled toothbrush to loosen things up.

-Wolf sends

 

[charles e miller]

Yea, when the memory gets here Im going to disconnect everything, take it to the shop and give it a good cleaning. I will post how it went, hopefully no bad slot.

 

[charles e miller]

Yea, when the memory gets here Im going to disconnect everything, take it to the shop and give it a good cleaning. I will post how it went, hopefully no bad slot.

So I took it out for a good cleaning, installed 4 new 1 Gb sticks, now it says it has 4 Gb of ram, and its running much better. guess I should run through the old sticks to see which one is bad, but this computer is really old, and its now working good, so maybe not. Thanks for all the help.