RAM Upgrades
in IT Support ·
The RAM modules are identical since I bought them as a set. Everything was working perfectly fine until just yesterday, but then I decided to give my PC a little cleaning. I didn't touch anything except for the internal fans, but once I powered it back up, things went sideways. Windows boots, but it’s showing 8GB total with only 4GB being usable. I tried a quick restart and checked the BIOS, and yep, it’s only detecting 4GB there too. I played around with the sticks, testing one at a time. If I put a single stick in the first slot, it recognizes it just fine. If I swap it to the second slot, it works too. But the moment I try to run them together using both slots, I get nothing but a black screen. The PC still turns on—all the fans spin up and there aren't any weird beep codes or anything like that—but it just won't post. So basically, before the cleaning, everything was solid, but now 4GB of my RAM has seemingly vanished into thin air. I already messed with MSCONFIG, but no luck. When the limit is unchecked, it says 8GB, but as soon as I hit apply and reboot, it goes right back to the same problem. I've pretty much cycled through every troubleshooting step I can think of. To sum it up: the RAM sticks work individually in either slot, but they refuse to play nice together in both slots at once. Hopefully, that makes sense. Oh, and I even tried flashing the BIOS, but that didn't help the detection issue, so I just flashed it back to the original version.