I recently tried upgrading the memory in my eMachines T6212. It comes with 512ddr out of the box (2 256 sticks). I recently bought two Kensington PC3200 DDR 400 512 MB KVR400 sticks of ram. When I install the 512 in the first two dimm slots (blue), and the two 256's in the other two dimm slots (white), the system only shows 896MB ram. Now I know that the on board video uses 128mb of ram, but that is still only 1gig showing up in the system when I have 1536mb plugged in. Any ideas?

can you try one stick or two sticks in there, put one or two of the new sticks in, leaving the old ones out to see if they show the full expected amount of ram for what they should do. At present we cant tell if it is not recognising the 2 256mb sticks or if it is recognsing the 512mb sticks as only 256mb. I have seen problems posted before when ram only shows have the right amount on some sticks. You could try Sandra (free) from www.sisoftware.co.uk which should show what the computer is finding in each slot (with all ram in place) so you can see where the short fall is.

I've had that problem before as well when doing 2x256 + 1x512 , or, when doing 2x256 + 2x512 also. This usually occurs on cheaper motherboards like eMachines and Compaq. I've always been able to 'fix' it by moving the modules around -- *not* pairing them as one is instructed to do. And, even better, I have always used Everest report to "see" which of the four modules is showing up as 'empty' to the BIOS. You may need to reconfigure the layout a couple of times, but you'll get it.

The two 256 sticks work as 512 DDR. I tried flip flopping the two 256 with one 512 at a time to make sure that they both worked, but even with either 512 in, it only shows 640MB (or 768 if you include the 128 that the video steals). I tried Sandra last night, but I wasn't sure what to look for. Sandra could see all 4 sticks plugged in, but I do remember it reading only 256 on each dimm slot. I will check Sandra again when I get home from work. Thanks.