My brother just bought an Acer Aspire 3680.He purchased 1 gig of DDR2 Memory from Crucial. When we get to the desktop the screen is fine at first then the screen goes off and back on with 8 bit display. 512 DDR2 came in the machine. Crucial site said he could mix memory sizes. I tried it with the 1 gig stick by itself in case the mixed memory was the problem. Same thing..I've tried 2 sticks of 512...same thing. I've tried 2 sticks of 1 gig each..same problem. This laptop won't allow any upgrade at all. Will only run correctly with (1) 512 stick. I've never seen this problem before. I've installed many memory sticks in computers. This is a first for me. What could be causing this?? Any advice would be appreciated. BTW. the computer shows the upgrade amount of memory but the display color keeps changing to 8 Bit! I change it back to 32 and it reverts back after a few moments to 8 Bit. I went to Acer and installed an updated driver for the Intel Graphics card thinking the driver would help. I haven't installed a bios update yet. Called Acer and they said to return it for repair. That it could be the memory banks. They seemed as confused as me. Has anyone heard of this and know of a solution? Thanks...

If you checked with Crucial did you actually buy the RAM from them? If not, you may have gotten incompatible RAM elsewhere. The density or number of banks could be out of spec.

Yes we did the Crucial check on laptop and purchased it from them. We phoned Crucial cuz we thought the memory could be faulty. They sent a new stick and its the same problem again. The orginal in the laptop is 512 is DDR2 5300. The stick we ordered which is compatible is 1 gig DDR 4200. I have a sticks in another laptop which is 1 gig 5300 and a 512 5300 that i just bought from Crucial.Tried all diffent ways (2) 512's (2) 1 gigs (1) 1 gig. Laptop will only work correctly with 1 512 Stick and no more. Even the 1 gig by itself makes the color revert to 8 bit. I know ram shouldn't affect the color but it's doing it. I change the color and after a few moments it goes right back to 8 bit. The stick for his laptop is good. I put into my laptop and it works fine. no problems at all. It's something with HIS laptop.

Just to make clear. The new stick is DDR2 PC4200..not just DDR

Sounds like you need to deal with Acer.

So my brother takes his laptop to Office Depot. The tech there hooked my brothers laptop to HIS monitor and put in a 1 gig generic ram. He told him maybe its the ram we bought. It is NOT the ram. It works perfect in my laptop which is a Gateway. There were NO problems with his generic memory but he hooked it to his store monitor. He said the banks are fine. I told my brother that is not the same as hooking it to the Acer monitor.He should have let the Memory upgrade run off the Acer LCD. I agree the banks are good cuz it reads the upgrade but changes the display colors. Its got to be some kind of setting with the Acer display in my opinion maybe from the bios settings. Tech said he has never heard of this happening. I've got an upgrade for the bios when i get back to his house. Acer support seemed confused about it when i phoned them. I was hoping someone has seen this before. Thanks for your input..*S*

Found the problem and wanted to pass this on in case someone else has the same situation adding memory to an Acer. Acer Empowering Technology Tools! Acer website stated the AET tools will control colors so that it runs properly. When we click on the E icon for the Tools program..the colors would change like the memory upgrade problem. We uninstalled AET and the memory upgrade is perfect now.