I have an older dell inspiron 3800 laptop running XP sp2 with 130 megs of 100mhz ram. Dell says the max ram is 2x 256 equals 512. I got a 512 pc133 ram stick but windows XP says the memory settings has changed suggests I start the set up guide instead of booting. I tried without the 130 megs stick in and won't start up. With the stick in, it produces a memory errror message. Is there a way to force XP to except the new stick in the bios set up? Or a way to get XP to change the memory settings in start up?
The statement by DELL means 2 memory modules with a maximum size of 256MB each. You cannot use one 512MB module. If the BIOS does not see the RAM then XP will not be able to use it.