Hey all, been awhile since I been here. I remember ya'll having quite a bit of knowledge, mebbe you can help me out on this one.

Ok, here's the skinny:

I have recently purchased the same stick of memory that I currently have running in my machine, a 512 MB PC2700 (Crucial). My board, ASUS P4PE (Intel 845PE chipset) supports 2 GB of PC2700 DDR. Both sticks (both are Crucial, identical part numbers) I have are 512 MB. Each will work when booting up solo, together, it hangs on boot. The old chip, has little micro-chips on it that read MT. The new one, has little chips that read Lucent (not sure if this is relevant or not, lots of horror stories due to non-identical chips).

The machine will load through POST, then the hardware detection screens after which it flips to a black screen and hangs.

Currently running Windows XP Pro, have most recent video drivers, chipset drivers and the most recent BIOS. Have tried resetting configuration in the BIOS, swapping memory, etc. Also, all 1024MB 'is' detected by the board in BIOS.

Kinda puzzled.. any idears?

Well, it could be any number of things, but the first thing I would try is a RAM tester. Get one of those bootable floppy ones like MemTest86 (www.memtest86.com/) or any others that get posted. ;)

The ones that boot up from a floppy (or even a CD) contain their own mini-OS making them much more reliable than a Windows-based app. They can expose a single flaky bit on a single stick of RAM!

Try your RAM sticks individually, then together if necessary. It might turn out one is bad, or it could just be incompatible memory modules.

Crucial is the memory module division of Micron Technologies - who design and manufacture the memory chips - hence the chips with MT. Crucial state that they only use their own chips in the module they manufacture BUT do use other manufacturers products that they have fully tested.

Lucent is a division of Bell labs and produce flash memory and fabricate chips for others.

I suggest you contact Crucial directly just to confirm that the product you have is legitimate (http://www.crucial.com/company/contacts.asp )

Yeah, I have tested the memory seperate and also togethor. Both work when running solo on the machine.

I have yet to run MemTest, but am planning on it this weekend.

I did contact Crucial and they told me both mods should work togethor, after having me send in the model numbers off each. They are basically the same, however the one I just purchased had a revision added to it to make it work better with the NForce motherboards. Other than that, it's identical to the first stick I have.

Hi,

Sometimes when you add new hardware, it is helpful to go into CMOS and then save and exit.

Also check the Asus website to see if there is a new BIOS you can download which might address your problem.

Also, did you try the RAM in different slots?