# ram upgrade causes hang during bootup

## strider1551

I just upgraded my ram only to find some crazy problems.  I went from 1G (2x512M sticks) to 4G (2x2G sticks) and am running the 64bit version of gentoo.  My motherboard manual clearly states that it supports up to 4G of memory, 2G in each slot.

1. BIOS tells me I have 3072M of ram.  If I put in a single stick, it tells me that it is 1472M.

2. Booting into gentoo is a little slow.  When I hit udev stuff, it crawls.  Eventually, it stops after checking my partitions.

3. Part of udev doesn't give me an [OK], but [!!].  I'll write it down next time.

4. However, if I only have one stick in, gentoo boots without complaint and runs just fine.

5. To make things funner, Windows XP (32bit) boots and runs fine with both sticks.

Does this make sense to anyone?  I'm hesitant to say that there is something wrong with the ram, seeing that Windows runs fine with both and they run fine individually.  Could it be related to BIOS thinking there is only 3G?

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## bunder

 *strider1551 wrote:*   

> 1. BIOS tells me I have 3072M of ram.  If I put in a single stick, it tells me that it is 1472M.
> 
> 4. However, if I only have one stick in, gentoo boots without complaint and runs just fine.
> 
> 5. To make things funner, Windows XP (32bit) boots and runs fine with both sticks.
> ...

 

- did you enable 4gig memory support in your kernel?

- windows has a 3 gig limit. 32bit or otherwise.

- have you tried a memtest with both sticks in?

cheers

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## strider1551

 *Quote:*   

> did you enable 4gig memory support in your kernel?

 

Looked for that, didn't see it under "Processor type and features". http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org/msg04331.html suggests that it isn't an option for amd64 kernels.

Anyway, problem partially solved.  I reduced my AGP aperture size and BIOS now recognizes an individual stick as 2G.  Moreover, gentoo boots when both sticks are in.  However, even the lowest AGP aperture size tells me that there is only 3G instead of 4G when both are in.

So, everything now boots with two sticks.  The only problem is BIOS and gentoo only see 3G.  The above link makes it sound like there should be some more BIOS options, so I guess I'll be fiddling some more.

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