Have I buggered my computer memory? How do you troubleshoot?

So I took advantage of the recent drop in RAM prices and bought 192 MB. I got one SIMM chip of DRAM 128 MB and one of 64 MB. Bought them off the reputable manufacturer’s website which scrupulously matched the exact make and model of Compaq computer with the right kind of DRAM. I very carefully took all the precautions for electrically grounding the computer and myself before touching the chips. I placed them into the two empty slots and powered up.

Compaq diagnostics showed that the computer now recognized all 256 MB of RAM and they were functioning with no discernable failure.

Now the problem. Not only was there no visible improvement in system performance, it seems to have become worse:

  1. I hear the hard drive grinding away 10 or 11 times in a row. It pauses for a second, then grinds another 10 or 11 times. It has been doing this continually since I installed the new RAM. It wasn’t doing that before.

  2. When I click on a web link, the mouse cursor freezes for a second before I can move it. It does this every time now; it used to behave like that only when the system was getting low on memory.

I am facing the disturbing implication that the system is now relying more on the hard drive for memory than before, when I had expected the opposite. This would explain the constant slowness. Is there any way to fix this? Is my new RAM all gone to waste?

You probably knocked something loose in there when you put in the ram chips, most likely a connector or two. Open itup & push everything back into their connectors, etc.

What may be happening if you have a Windows OS is that your swap filehas gone bad. Try going into the control panel, disabling the swap file (virtual memory), rebooting, turn virtual memory back on, reboot. Windows manages the swap file based on how much RAM and hard disk space you have available. By changing the ram size, you confused Windows and it can no longer manage the existing swap file correctly. This would explain the hard drive grinding, the pauses when loading web pages AND the general slowness of the computer.

What OS are you using? Early versions of Win95 had problems with anything over 64 megs.

It’s Win98. I followed xizor’s suggestion. It upped the amount of virtual memory to 4784 MB free. It reports 248 MB of RAM (I have 256 in all). My hard drive is still cranking away, but the rhythm is all different now. The system seems to be performing a little better. Wish I really understood what is going on.

Hey, I just noticed — a couple months later — that my hard drive isn’t making the grinding noises any more as it runs steady. There isn’t the time delay when clicking a link, either (except when running a lot of apps at once, after a while).

My problem seems to have fixed itself without my doing anything? Do such computer issues just sort of smooth themselves out over time, or what?

Sacrifice a floppy disk at a crossroads on a moonless midnight and open your computer’s case no more. You have been blessed, but the Wintel Gods giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other.

(Actually, if the problem reoccurs, my advice as a Mac person–i.e, of rather dubious PC qualifications–is to set up a static rather than a dynamic swap file. I believe I read somewhere that Windows does a crappy job of managing a dynamically resizeable swap file once the RAM is above 128 MB. And at 256 you don’t need the advantages of VM for memory’s sake so much as for efficient memory paging, so a static swap file will do you more good. Some PC techs will give you better advice than I could for the optimal size of a static PC swap file under high RAM conditions).

All right, AHunter3, I’d like to try your suggestion (about the static swap file, not the sacrifice).

I may have spoken too soon. I still hear the hard drive noise when running several applications at once, but not when the computer’s sitting idle.

This site recommends setting a “semi-dynamic” swap file, setting it to a minimum but no maximum size. How do you do that? I don’t know enough about the swap file to be messing with it until I learn more about it. What is a swap file anyway, and how does it work and how do you tweak it?

TIA