Max ram for ME

WhitPhil,

I have a problem of a different kind.
I have two 512MB PC2100 DDR sticks.
Both work fine if installed as a single unit.
However, with both memory sticks installed, I get a "testing" message on my monitor that will not go away, The BIOS never even gets a change to do its thing. Tried reversing the sticks same result.
I have a Viewsonic 17" flatpanel moninitor (VG171) running digitally connected to a GEForce4 TI 4600 Video card.

I checked through the Bios for any possible setting that may have an effect on the situation but could find none.

My Mobo an Abit BD7II-RAID is supposed to accept up to 2GB of memory.

Any suggestions welcome. I do a lot of video and DVD stuf and could realloy use the extra memory. I am running Windows ME.

Can you describe where in the boot process this message appears?

Also, what does this message look like. Is it the "dos" background, or in a Window? If a window, is there a title on the bar of the window?

Do you have the MinFileCache line in the System.ini file?

WhitPhil

This message appears as the very first thing on the screen when the machine is turned on.
The BIOS does not even seem to be able to start, it is a red rectangle that steps around the parameters of the screen simply stating "TESTING" and that is where the machine hangs. The normal BIOS info never appears on the screen there is no beep.
it's almost as though the BIOS cannot find the memory. As I stated both modules work and are good since I have tested them one at a time.
The CD ROM activity lights come on briefly like on a normal boot, the HD activity light flickers for a few seconds and thats the end of it.
There is no MinFileCache file in the system init file, though I do not think it would not make any difference here as the machine never gets that far.
It seems to me as though the BIOS hangs up testing the memory.
BIOS is award software 6.00 PG date 09/17/2002 latest update available

This is a memory / motherboard / BIOS issue, and as such I would start a thread in the Hardware Forum.

The only thing I can think of, is that there is something different about the 2 sticks that doesn't allow them to work together.

This site indicates "3 DIMM slots, 2GB Max (DIMM 2 & 3 sharing - 4 banks total) " and gives an example of a couple of benchmarks that he ran.