Just today, I purchased a 512mb ram stick, or whatever you call it, and put it in my computer shortly after. I followed the instructions on how to install, the 512mb stick is compatable with my motherboard and everything is kosher. Now, here comes the crashes... When I attempt to play the game, Painkiller, hoping for really smooth fun (i guess?).Anyway, i click on a map and watch it load, but upon finishing, STOPS. I can hear sound effects in the backround, repeating over and over again. A few seconds later, after stopping, I'm booted to my desktop, but with the map loading screen still up. I can click icons, but cant see them, etc. After trying it four more times, with different maps, i loaded a saved game, and surprisingly, it loaded! But the damned map loading screen was still up. I could hear myself jump, run around, and all that, but the map loading screen was still up. But, when i tried to fire my weapon, the game crashes to my desktop, same as before, map loading screen up and everything. A similar problem occured with another game, The Suffering: Ties That Bind. it actually loaded 100% fine: game ran normal like it did before the ram upgrade. But, when i pick up a weapon, and fire it, the game crashes! But for some odd reasons... older games, like Unreal Tournament, runs FINE. i fire my gun, run around, die, respawn, etc. perfectly fine. (i havent tried any newer games, but im guessing they will have the same effect.. not like i can try new games with a Win98) Now, im bleak when it comes to computer details but i know something went sour with the ram upgrade. Do i need to change the "bios" settings to accomodate the new gigabyte? a new video card? (computer discription below) im just lost... help anyone? Windows 98 NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 256mb Ram (updated) two hard drives, one 60gigs the other 30gigs 1 Gigabyte of ram (two 512mbs: the new stick is an Cosair Memory XMS Pro Series PC3200 while the other came with the motherboard with an earlier upgrade. the stick is PC3200 as well. but this problem is brand new today. NEVER happened before.) AMD Athlon[tm] XP 2500+

its possible that you got the worng ram, need to update the motherboard and/or graphics card drivers, or upgrade the motherboard bios. Doug Windows Xp Pro x64 AMD Sempron 3000+ 1.8ghz 1 Gig Ram pc2700 Nforce 4 Motherboard Radeon X700 256mb Realtek Ac 97 Onboard Audio Thermaltake 430W Power Supply

When you turn your computer on, pres DELETE. Skip acroos the tabs and locate the Chipset option, for RAS to CAS latency select a value of 2.0. You might see in our sigs, 2 3 3 6 etc, thest are the RAM timings in the order you will find them in the chipset option. With that much memory you dont want to 'congest the highway'. Simply put your cup is overflowing. You want to reduce the latency ( increase the cup size ) to match the L2 and clock. Lower the latency in order to read: 2 3 3 7 If you still crash, drop the 7 to a 6. If you crash after that go 2.5 3 3 7 then 2.5 3 3 6 Each mobo and set of RAM have their own personality and there really is no exact timing you 'should' set this to. The trick is to be patient and try a combination of timings. WinXP PRO SP2 ASUS AN78X-X BIOS ASUS 1014 beta 2 PC3200 768 1.5t 3t 3t 6t AMD XP 2600+ @ 2.2 ATI AIW 9800 PRO

thanks for the responses! ill give the options a go and get back to you.

ack... as if fate seems to like me, Painkiller crashed to the desktop, without the map loading screen, but with an error message: "DDHelp has caused an invalid page fault in NVDD32.DLL. the operation will be shut down" or something much more accurate. what in heck does this mean?

What follows that is in Module unknown, registers (hex then dec) and Stackdump.. What happened in your RAM fux0red. You have to play with the timings, also win98 and 98SE are absolutely the worste enemy when your adding RAM - trust me I only just moved on to XP and Mandrake in the last year. I'll speak to 2 things you have wrong with that system; First off - '60gigs the other 30gigs' 60gigs is an enemy to the FAT32 format and windows98/SE. Idealy anything above 30gig should be NTFS, its stable and faster. Second - You're using Win98SE, period. You got decent hardware, but your going to have pitfalls with that system ( specificaly when you have 2 different RAM models) - I know this from 5 years expericene on the 98's I even once posted to get XP off my drive so I could go back to 98SE - I have since seen the error in my ways; you need to get XP. If you don't have the budget, but want an equally solid system then check google for Mindriva or SUSE linux versions (10 and up). Don't be afraid of the word Linux, today it's as user frendly as your windows98. The KDE desktop looks like a mating of MAC OSX and WinXP, youll feel really comfortable on the desktop and with the start menu etc. It is way more secure and you can't beat the price tag: free! Not to mention you dont blue screen and you get a mimic of just about every commercialy released software for windows free, programs that rival Office XP etc... There is some rolling up of the cuffs if you are going to configure linux for gaming, installing some drivers will require you to edit the 'xconfig.' But the help is widely available <cough> !!GOOGLE!! </cough> and if you got 2 drives you can always keep that old familur windows there for you as you grow into your linux. WinXP PRO SP2 ASUS A7N8X-X BIOS 1014 beta 2 PC3200 768 1.5t 3t 3t 6t AMD XP 2600+ @ 2.2 ATI AIW 9800 PRO 128MB

ahhh... oh well. i do have windows xp, got lucky and got a cd (dont ask how). was wondering if that would fix the problem and it sounds that it will... sooo... yeah. xp it is. thanks for the answer pr3d. i was just hoping that i could stay in the stone age for a little while longer XD