Help! I am experiencing a problem concerning a new hardware purchase... Recently, I installed more RAM (Ebuyer 256MB DDR266 PC2100 Extra Value RAM), and it was great at first. Then, however, it started randomly rebooting. My query is, is it more likely that I've got stuff in the way and it's over heating, or is it more likely that it is faulty. See, I thought if it was faulty, it just wouldn't work. Please forgive my ignorance as I am only thirteen and this is my first time doing something like this :D. Thanking you in advance. :D

Could be the new RAM module is incompatible with the one you already have. Or it could be the module is just faulty. Try running the computer with the new module by itself and see if the problems still occure. Then again the extra RAM might just be pushing your power supply over the limits. What power supply do you have and what other componants? Try downloading Aida32. This will tell you about the RAM and may give you some indication of incampatabilty. www.aida32.hu Stuart

Run a standalone memory test from a boot diskette like DocMemory_v2.0 and/or MemTest86_v3.0. Download and use to make a boot diskette. Then boot the system with it and let it run for several hours. There should be no errors reported.

I've had times when my computer would just reboot for no reason at all. Sometimes it would give a VXD error on a blue screen and then would reboot itself. All these issues i've had were fixed with Norton Utilities Optimization Wizard. Your problem may be hardware like overheating or a bad component, but alot of times the registry just needs a repair. I've only had one bad device problem and it never rebooted on its own. It would give a blue screen and an error message. That was a modem though, not a stick of Ram. I assume that the ram you purchased is the same type of ram you had originally, but just made by another company, right? If you run Ram at different speeds problems can happen. Sounds to me like you know enough not to make that mistake though. It can be alot of things. For example on the HP Media Center computers, if you plug a Cable modem into the computer via USB you may find that when you type an address in Internet Explorer that your computer shuts off. That's a USB problem that can be fixed using an Ethernet cable. Are you running a particular application when the computer shuts down? Maybe do an MSCONFIG (Start-Run) and uncheck any software you don't need loading up at the computers bootup. There are sites on the net that tell you what you can and can't uncheck. Maybe a bad program loads when you start the computer.

Thank you for your help so far. It tends to happen when I'm pushing my computer to it's limits, for example playing Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Or when I'm doing a lot- That's why I thought it might be overheating. I have a 230V power supply, however, I'm not sure about the Watt :S. "Sometimes it would give a VXD error on a blue screen and then would reboot itself. " If I hang around long enough to see it, I get that dreaded blue screen for about a second before it reboots. I'm off to download some of the programs you suggested. "All these issues i've had were fixed with Norton Utilities Optimization Wizard. ", I used to have that..., thank you for the suggestion. Thank you all very much again. I'll be back :D.