Hi all, TIA for any help.

 

Dimension 4100
Motherboard part number PR-02336V-12461-0BQ-021T (815E Chipset)
Pentium III 866MHz
Originally 128MB RAM
Windows ME

 

I wanted to upgrade to 512MB RAM.  One of the guys that I work with said he has had good luck with Mushkin memory, so I ordered a pair of 256MB PC133 sticks (P/N 970617D) from them.  Their site said that this part number is OEM for the Dimension 4100.  Latency was listed as Dell OEM timing.

 

I installed the new mem.  To force a refresh of stored params, I went into BIOS and set it to clear NVRAM on the next boot.  During reboot, POST saw all 512MB and flagged no fails.  After the new mem was installed, Windows started acting flakey (more than usual).  Sometimes does not finish launching, sometimes gets sluggish, sometimes locks up, sometimes does not finish shutting down.

 

I ran Norton Diagnostics memory test (in Windows), set to halt at the first failure.  It is indicating an address line failure.  There may be other failures, but it halts after the first fail.

 

Updated BIOS to version A11 (latest on the Dell site).  Made sure all Windows updates are installed.  Checked all system voltages and they look good.  Ran 3 different memory tests; Dell diagnostics, MemTest86+ and MS Windows Diagnostic.  Dell boots from CD, the other two from floppy.  All three run in DOS mode.  Ran all three for a total of about ten hours run time with no failures.  Still get the failure from Norton when running in Windows.

 

The only time the problem seems to show up is when in Windows.  Possibly a problem with the way Windows handles the memory?

 

Any ideas or suggestion?