Video card stopped working...sort of

[thegreatespero]

I recently installed 4 GB of RAM on my PC. I have a GeForce 210 card with 1GB. I had a Vista/XP dual boot, and as soon as I upgraded to 4 GB of RAM everything went to hell. All of a sudden hibernate got disabled on both OSs, and I mean completely gone (couldn't disable it, couldn't enable it, the hiberfil.sys was gone). Both OSs are reporting that I only have 3.1 GB of RAM available. What's worse is, both OSs switched to some kind of default video driver. My card is no longer recognized by either of them. I did a clean reinstall of Vista thinking it might fix the problem, but my card was still not detected and when I try to install the Detonator driver I am told that no compatible card could be found. The memory seems to be working OK, I ran the Vista memory test. Have I run into a 32 bit limitation? Will installing a 64 bit OS allow it to see my video card? Or should I just take out two 1 GB memory bars and plug the old 512 memory bar in and stay 32 bit for now? I am not sure that would fix the problem though. I mean, if the card were having problems, it shouldn't be working at all, shouldn't it?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

32 bit will only see about 3.25 gigs of ram,but 64 bit will see all 4 gigs.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Is your card showing in the device manager or bios?

 

[thegreatespero]

No. But that is the problem, as soon as I installed the new memory, both OSs "lost" the video card. Vista switched to the VGASave driver, which doesn't support hibernation, as seen here. http://www.ifmdb.com/windows_7-message-legacy-driver-vgasave-preventing-hibernation-mzWhaTjf.html
I am not sure whether there is a connection between the installation of the new memory module and the video card going haywire, but seeing how the latter happened immediately after the former...
And like I said, whenever I try to install the drivers for the card, I am told "no compatible video card can be found". Even the "display adapters" category seems to have disappeared from the Device Manager in Vista.

 

[thegreatespero]

Today I tried removing some of the RAM bars. I have 4 bars of 1 GB each, 533 MB. As soon as I removed two of them, the Nvidia GeForce 210 card magically reappeared. When I added them back, the card disappeared again.
Memory appears OK after running the Vista memtest, and the POST screen and the BIOS correctly say I have 4 GB.
Searching on Google for "video card disappears when i add more ram" found the following threads which discuss issues somewhat similar to mine:
http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-cards/134640-crossfire-disappearing-ram.html

the more ram you add the more the pci devices will use if you look in the wei you will see how much but also as well you know 64 bit reconizes more ram and 32 bit is stuck at 4 gigs 3.5 usable so it would be a good idea to move on to x64 and add another few gigs just for the sake of having enough gump for what you are trying to do

The person above could be on to something: as soon as I add more than 2 GB of RAM, the video card disappears (my Windows Experience score becomes 1.0 because of this) and going into device manager I see this:
Intel 945G/GZ/P/PL/PCI Express Root Port - 2771 has a yellow question mark and the device status is:

Your computer's system firmware does not include enough information to properly configure and use this device. To use this device, contact your computer manufacturer to obtain a firmware or BIOS update. (Code 35)

Click 'Check for solutions' to send data about this device to Microsoft and to see if there is a solution available.

and one thread on this very forum:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/309232-15-video-card-disappears-what-about

I turned everything off, blew and vacuumed the dust off, installed the new RAM, turned things back on and got the one long and 2 short error beeps. Couldn't get anything to work. No monitors at all. Got out the laptop, got on line and looked up the error codes. They said the one long and two short beeps mean the video card is bad or not seated properly. Reseated it (several times, etc.) checked and tightened all the connections, still no soap.

So I removed the new RAM Patriot Signature 2 gig (2 X 1 GB) Same CAS, same timings as the old Corsair RAM. Very pretty blue heat sinks for what it's worth, looks great) turned computer back on and it worked!

What the heck is that about? Anybody have an explanation for that? I tried alternate slots for the Patriot and Corsair ram and then both pairs next to one another. Tomorrow I'll try the new Patriot RAM by itself to see if it works alone or is bad.

Has anybody ever heard of RAM causing a video card to not work?