READING ERRORS

[Dossy2]

I have a friend who has a computer assembled for him by another friend and he was teling me that he has a 128MB RAM but everytime his system indicates only 64MB RAM. Could someone please tell me in slight details what could be the most probable cause of this problem and what could be done to remedy the situation. Could it be due to poor BIOS settings or jumper configurations??

Another friend also has a computer with OS win95. The system has been running quite normally but then two days ago no pictures could be shown on the screen, we tried by rebooting the computer and the pictures were up again but it kept repeating the same process after a while. Yesterday when I visited the friend he told me that his system could not read cd's or diskettes. We tried to see what to do to the problem but with no success. Could someone please help here on what to do in these cases.

[jcift]

Friend #1:
It is possible that the memery chips may need to be checked. Make sure that all of the chips are inserted correctly and securely. If they aren't, the system is only going to read 'what it sees'. Are there any error messages? If not, this could be the case. What kind of motherboard does your friend have in the computer? Is it an older one? Some motherboards may not support 128MB, It may ony be able to support so much (this may not be the case, but just for GP).

Friend #2:
when you say that no pictures could be shown on the screen, do you mean pictures from certain applications, or the monitor viewing as a whole is screwed up? I will need more information, if you can give it. As with the CDs and disks, are you receiving any error messages? If so, go back and record the display and let me know.
Check the connection of the CD rom and make sure that it is secure. The same with the floppy disk. Is the floppy disk attached to the motherboard, or to an I\O card?
Need a little more information on this one, too?
Let us know...........

[Paleo Pete]

Some machines can only read single sided memory, not double sided, and it could also be related to memory that's the wrong density.

For the video problem, more info would be helpful.

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[Dossy2]

I would just answer as per the second friend, the monitor viewing was completely screwed up that there was no pictures coming at all to the screen. The cd and the floppy disks I was told about after a technician had taken the hard drive away so I couldn't get access to it to check. All he told me was that the technician could not find anything wrong with it and so they had to take the whole system away for checking or repair. Otherwise I just wanted to know what could have been the causes of this kind of problems in general and possible solutions.

[Dossy2]

Could someone tell me as to where to look for the type of the motherboard coz I checked from the BIOS but atleast I didn't find anything much. Let me know also if there is a possibility of knowing how old a motherboard is and from where. I need this kind of information to check for the problem I have with the memory stuff.

[Paleo Pete]

During the boot process, while the memory count up, hit the [Pause] key. The BIOS ID string is the long number either at top left or bottom left. Write it down, and go to my site, posted below. Look for the BIOS links, and you'll find sites with info to identify the motherboard and get a manual. The top link, Trish's, has good links in the Motherboard/BIOS section too.

The manual will tell you what types of memory are supported, how much it will use, the BIOS ID string will tell you the approximate date of the board, it's usually right beside the version number.

------------------
If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)