hi, my system has currently 512mb double sided DDR ram. I was given a single sided DDR400 512mb of ram. I installed it in the spare DIMM module. When i loaded up my computer it came up 1024mb Ram OK. My system ran fine but some programs crashed so i was going to remove it but then the system worked perfectly for about 5-6 hours. A blue error screen came up saying a serious error has occured dumping physical memory. It came up a few times at random so i removed the ram. everything works fine now, so its obvious the ram that was the problem. I dont know if the problem was with windows, compatability, damage to the ram (even though it worked and came up 1024mb ram ok on bios). Also is ram sensitive to static. I installed the ram going by the guidelines. maybe it was the friend who gave it too me even though he said his system worked fine before he bought a new computer. any suggestions? thanks

You mixed double sided and single sided ram? Swap the ram to opposite slots,"sometimes" if that don,t work you have a compatability issue.

i recently bought a computer 'needing attention'. it had one stick of 256mb DDR pc2700 ram of the correct spec for the computer and settings in BIOS were correct. It kept crashing and getting the dumping physical memory message. Changed ram and all was fine. I assume that the ram was not faulty in such a great way to stop booting and showing 256mb but was faulty to a minor degree which caused the problems. I have never tried that stick in another computer so dont know what would happen. It might be that some computers are more tolerant than others of ram that is not 100% fine. So perhaps your friends computer is more tolerant of the ram than yours is.

Never assume RAM is good, even when you buy it "new". It should always be tested with a program such as memtest86 BEFORE it's put into service.