installing new ram stops vista booting. HELP!!

[starbuck]

I have a K8V(asus) mobo. Have 3 dimm slots. 1 blue(closest to CPU) and 2 yellow ones. I currently have 2 512mb corsair 3200 sticks installed, 1 in the blue slot and one in a slot next to it.

As vista as been jerking about a little(and because I've wanted to upgrade for a while) I bought a 1gb stick of corsair 3200 with same timings as existing ram(3.3.3.8).

The bios recognizes the 1gb stick but windows the hangs when trying to boot.

Ideas?

also, what timings do you think I could run this ram at(it's corsair XMS ram) to help my pc - bearing in mind the rest of the pc runs at stock speed.

[Jay]

mixing ram is always a really bad idea

Unless its exactly the same ram you may have a voltage problem, some sticks of ram need more volts than others to achive their timings. If you don't give it enough power it will be ok until stressed.

[starbuck]

All 3 sticks of ram I now have is corsair XMS ram with the same timings so I'd have thought that the voltage would be the same. Shouldn't be too much of a prob if 2 sticks are 512 and 1 is 1gb should it if they're the same ram?

[Jay]

xms what though?

XL
XLPT

etc

[starbuck]

xms what though?

XL
XLPT

etc

not sure, it's just called XMS platinum.

[Jay]

go to the corsair website and look up their voltages

[starbuck]

ok, may have spotted the problem.

As I couldn't find the voltages on corsair's site, I took one of the 512mb sticks out(and it reminded me it was a matched twinx XMS platinum pair I had got(model no 3200ct and the 1gb is 3200pt). It mentioned a the model no on it followed by v then a figure which I assume is the voltage.

the 512mb sticks are 3.1v and the 1gb stick is 6.1v.

So now we know the voltages are different, how can I get them to play together nicely(as I'd prefer not to spend another £70 on another gig of ram to match the one I've just bought).

[Speedo]

I would download and burn Memtest86 (google it) and find out if it is the memory causing the errors, and what stick it is.
Have you also tried all the sticks seperately, and in different slot combinations? I presume you've tried the 1GB stick on it's own to check it's not faulty? It's worth trying each stick seperately and the slots, to make sure everything is fine. It could be one stick, it could be a slot, a timing issue, voltage issue (unlikely at stock speeds), a combination.. only testing will find out.
The voltages you quote are way out, '6.1' suggests you are misreading something. There is likely to be a very small threshold difference if you're pushing the timings, but that's it.

[Jay]

the problem with corsair is the SPD never sets the correct voltage or timings.

[starbuck]

Bit of a strange prob has occured. Tried resetting bios to default values and swapped dimm slots(only thing I'd prev changed was changing boot drive from ide to sata in bios). Sys then booted into windows vista and showed 2gb. Worked ok like this for a while then next time turned on, had to do same thing. Now, it wouldn't boot into windows at all(stopped at the vista loading/vista screen - where that bar scrolls on the bottom of the screen).

Had to remove my 1gb stick and works ok again. Strange thing is though, it has worked with 2gb so suggests it's not a prob with the new stick.

any suggestions?