I have been assisting a neighbor with their Dell (ick) computer and have run into a few problems. Here's what has happened so far: We attempted to simply reformat the system - shouldn't be a hard task. On reboot during post, we received a "System Memory has Changed" error ("F1 to continue, F2 to enter setup", etc.) I figured from this that something was wrong with their RAM - by trying to boot with only one RAM slot filled at a time, I found that two of three of their RAM DIMMs have failed. I figured that I could at least get Windows installed and working with this small amount of RAM left (64 MB) and then inform them that they needed to purchase more RAM. Practically every time we attempted to boot the machine, we would receive BSODs (Blue Screen of Death) and the computer would restart (I believe the error was something dealing with the Page File, but I didn't write it down). After a few reboots, Windows did manage to startup without BSODing, which was pretty odd. Any idea what could be wrong? Perhaps the two dead DIMMs are the reason to blame the BSODs upon? Any help is appreciated.

Do you have the correct memory/ram for the computer? Dell support has several downloads that assist in your problems. You could run Memtest http://www.memtest86.com/ Can,t think of any other solution.Heres a littly diddy while your waiting for another response. Ladies and gentlemen poor boys in a trance bow legged mosquitoes and cross eyeded ants. I am here to tell you a story I know nothing about........ One fine day in the middle of the night 2 dead dimms got up to fight.

From what I have been told, both DIMMs were working before, but I will try to run a Memtest when I visit them again today.

... are you sure the BIOS battery has not died and changed BIOS to default settings?

I am sure the CMOS battery has not died, as I had to change their boot priority to set CD-ROM boot before HDD boot (so I could boot from the Windows CD for a format & reinstall). Nonetheless, if the CMOS battery did die and loaded the defaults, it still should be able to run.

Dell support usually has a 32bit diagnostic file used to make a floppy disk to run the diagnostics on your computer. Have you already downloaded and tried it?

Before you run the memory test. Give the system a good cleaning. Use a can of compressed air, not a vacuum cleaner. Check the CPU and power supply fans. Check for dust clogging the power supply input ports. Do yourself a favor BACKUP! Sorry, I do not check for private messages