Installing RAM misery

[brightonalex]

Sorry to ask such a boring question.

I have a Carillon PC with Asrock board. I need to upgrade the RAM to 2 GB. When I put the new cards in and turn on my machine the monitor says "no signal".

I've tried with 4 different ones now, the new ones recommended by a specialist.

PC World say they will only install their own products; if I give them my PC will they be able to work out what RAM I need, and make it all work for me? It's getting me down.

[Angstrom]

'no signal'?

and the machine is making booting up noises with drive lights flashing?

are there any unusual sounding beeps , or a voice telling you anything?

to get past all that ... IE the computer sounds like it is booting but you get 'no signal'
IMO -
This simply means you havent plugged your monitor cable back in! or your video card became unseated (even that should give a special beep)


if there was any kind of memory error you would have been posting "I installed memory and my computer wont boot and makes weird beeping noises/ a voice says 'there is a problem with the memory' "

[Machinate]

what angstrom said - bad ram gives a special beeping sound - iirc it's three long beeps.

[quandry]

my limited experience with installing ram on a desktop (sony viao) is that you really have to push those mothers in there to get them to be fully seated. The slots on my wife's desktop have little plastic flip-down things that hold the ram in place. When I put the new ram in, the plastic things would flip down all the way, and I knew intuitively it wasn't set deep enough, but I had already pushed on the ram really hard and wasn't trying to break anything. Booting up didn't get me anywhere (sounds somewhat similar to what you've got happening), so after gettting my gumption up, I pushed about as hard as I could and finally got those bastards to slide all the way in so that the fild down things would lock them properly in place. Are you sure you have your ram all the way in place?

[brightonalex]

I'll try that then quandry - but the clips are clicked into place. Like you say I'm worried about breaking them.

I know it's a problem with the RAM, because when I put my old RAM back in again everything works OK.

[MrYellow]

Yeah it should beep with errors if there is a problem (motherboards have a
bunch of different beep codes depending on the type of problem)

With the "no signal" thing..... I've had this on different computers from
time to time, sometimes they seem to get into a bit of "state"....
Sometimes it's a matter of a full cold boot (power completely off),
sometimes it can be the graphics card has fallen out, and sometimes it just
comes good after u try a bunch of stuff.

This is also a good idea to check:

Check the brand, size and amount of RAM in your motherboard manual.
Motherboards support different amounts of different brands in different slots.

For example... The RAM I have my MB only supports 2Gig of (not 4) and
they have to be in slots 1 and 2, no others.

-Ben

[googoo]

I kept getting a no signal message when I had the wrong "cas" ram in....I used 2.5 and kept getting the same problem as you until I changed it for ram with a cas latency of 3. Alls good now!

[The Revrend]

you need to install your RAM and then perform a CMOS Clear. Check your motherboard manual for the secion on clearing the CMOS.

There is likely a jumper you have to change on the motherboard or a couple of pins you have to short.

Here is the info on clearing the CMOS from the ASROC's support FAQ:

Answer:Please unplug the ATX power and remove the battery, use a metal material like paper clip to short the CLRCMOS1 soldering points or CLRCMOS2 jumpers for 3 seconds. After that, install the battery and plug the ATX power back to the motherboard.
Note: Please do not clear the CMOS right after you update the BIOS.

Once you have done this it should come up and work fine, you'll have to reset some of of the setting in the BIOS

Rev