computer help, por favor

[Rusty]

ok, so i bought a stick of memory. i know it's the right stick, pc3200 ddr. i've installed mem in this computer before. anyway, i install it, and i get no signal at all to the monitor. great, my graphics card just crapped out.
well, i take the memory out and start her up again. starts up fine, gotta picture and everything.
so why would memory affect video? i get nothing, just the monitor telling me that i should check my cable and comp, blah blah blah.
i've tried:
updating video drivers.
removing all memory except the new stick. tried the new stick in all four slots. no go for any.

other than that, i'm stumped. with the stick in, the comp starts up, sounds fine, no weird beeps, i can hear it booting, but nothing on the screen.

any ideas? it's an ati radeon x1300 card. generic memory.

[Flailer]

I think the black screen is an indication that the computer isn't even posting. It's not even able to load it's BIOS because of a memory problem. Sometimes the computer will have a series of beep codes when it starts up that can indictate a low level error problem - sure it's not that?

Have you tried the memory on it's own (without having the original stick in there)? Sometimes there's incompatibilities between having different types of RAM in the box, even if they're supposed to be compatible. If not, maybe the RAM is a dud? Return it? Swap it?

[Rusty]

yeah, i've read about the "beep codes" and the comp doesnt make a peep when it's firing up. i've also tried just the new stick in there to check if it's incompatible with the older memory. and no go for that either... all signs are pointing towards the mem stick being a dud. just looking for any suggestions before i toss it in the mail.

[Gornickthy]

I have had that happen before with the memory stick just being a dud due to the name brand. I bought the correct memory type, but one certain brand didn't want to work with my system. It was weird, but when I switched brands it worked fine. It may have just been a bad stick, but I still blame Chase in the end for everything regardless. I am sure he had something to do with it somehow somewhere.

[Go'f]

memory can have some real issues. Most people are not aware that when it comes down to it brand and stated speed are less important than you might expect. here are the steps i suggest you follow.

Obtain the date of manufacture for the RAM
Obtain the date of manufacture for the motherboard.
Then plug those dates into this tool and it should be able to give you a good diagnoses of the problem

[Terl]

I don't want to seem like Capt. Obvious but is it desktop memory? I installed memory last year and right before I put it in I noticed something odd with the packaging, It turned out to be laptop memory.
Secondly, if its the right type of memory is the memory in the machine larger memory than you are installing?
The memory in the first slot needs to be larger ie; 1GB then 512MB, 256.

[Bargeld]

The 'seating' of the ram is important also. Many a time I have installed another stick of ram in either a desktop or laptop, and ended up with nothing. Removing and re-installing the ram might fix.

Also, if you want to see if the new ram is bad, remove all the other ram and boot only with the new stick in.