ASUS EeePC 900 not booting after RAM upgrade

BandrikBandrik Elkhart, IN Icrontian
edited February 2010 in Hardware
Hey everyone,

Having a problem with my ASUS EeePC 900. Long story short, tried upgrading the memory and it didn't work out, but switching back to its original memory continues to have issues, leaving me dead in the water.

The story:

This week I tried to upgrade my ASUS EeePC 900's memory from a puny 512MB to a more spacious 2GB to give Windows XP a bit more breathing room. The 900's known for being EXTREMELY finicky with RAM. Having memory it "doesn't like" causes everything from instability, freezing/scrambling when switching from battery to DC, or not booting at all.

Already tried a Kingston "ValueRAM 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 SODIMM Memory" (KVR667D2S5/2G) , which did the battery-to-AC pixellate/glitch up/freeze issue mentioned above. So I swapped it out and tried the Transcend JM667QSU-2G 2GB JetRam DDR2 667 SO-DIMM.

The Transcend simply prevented Windows XP from booting. It would go through the POST screens, show the Windows XP logo for a fraction of a second, a BSOD for a fraction of a second, blackness, then the BIOS' "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows could not boot" screen. Starting in "SAFE MODE" yields the same results.

Swapping back to the "trusty" original 512MB memory (which has Samsung chips by the way), and now it's doing the same exact thing (not booting, millisecond BSOD and "cannot boot Windows"). Not sure what happened. When switching the memory, I grounded myself, removed the battery and power cord, and handled the memory very carefully. Sigh...

I'm a little lost of what to do next. Anyone have any ideas? Would reinstalling Windows help, or what? Any pointing in the right direction would be appreciated. Otherwise it seems the tech gods believe I'm not at all worthy of owning an ASUS device. v_v

Thanks in advance,
Bandrik

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    Are you sure the 900 is one of the systems that supports 2GB? Some of the netbooks can only take 1.5.
  • BandrikBandrik Elkhart, IN Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    Thrax wrote:
    Are you sure the 900 is one of the systems that supports 2GB? Some of the netbooks can only take 1.5.

    Absolutely sure. I bought it from Woot.com, and followed a very extensive chain of forum posts of people reporting back on how they upgraded their memory to 2GB, their SSD's to 32GB, which models they used, etc.

    The Kingston was the most widely accepted as the most compatible stick (which didn't work for me), and others recommended the Transcend I used.

    If it came to it, I could deal with being stuck with only 512mb, I'll just install Linux. But as it is, returning it to its original state with the 512mb back in it, it's ALSO not booting Windows at all. Something's not right here, methinks...
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    Do you have an option in the BIOS to disable "Quick Boot" or something to that effect? On my EeePC my memory upgrade was not recognized until I disabled that option. It appears that during a normal boot the machine does not fully check for hardware changes in an effort to provide a faster boot process. If that works, you should be able to re-enable the option after the new RAM is recognized.
  • BandrikBandrik Elkhart, IN Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    mas0n wrote:
    Do you have an option in the BIOS to disable "Quick Boot" or something to that effect? On my EeePC my memory upgrade was not recognized until I disabled that option. It appears that during a normal boot the machine does not fully check for hardware changes in an effort to provide a faster boot process. If that works, you should be able to re-enable the option after the new RAM is recognized.

    A very good point. Let's see here...

    Ah.. sadly, "speed boot" "quiet boot" and "boost boot" were all already disabled, and the bios does recognize it as having 512MB. But to humor you I'll try re-enabling and dis-abling them all. See if that makes a difference...

    UPDATE: Nope, no effect. Blast...

    Still, thanks for the suggestions.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    In my situation, the BIOS said I had the 2GB upgrade, but would not pass that info on to windows until I had disabled that option. Windows still only saw 1GB and was running slow as all hell. It was pretty odd, quite frankly.

    Anyway, just thought I'd suggest it. Good luck.
  • BandrikBandrik Elkhart, IN Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    Just wanted to post a success story update. Used the recovery DVD that came with the netbook. It used Symantec Ghost to re-image the harddrive with a factory fresh copy of XP Home. That did the trick - so it seems something was corrupted to prevent the boot of XP before.

    I also installed the 2 GB memory and it works flawlessly now. No issues, no freezes, nothing. I also then upgraded the solid state drive to a bigger and faster model, re-imaged XP, and also installed Ubuntu EasyPeasy (version of Ubuntu specifically for Eee PCs) as a dual-boot solution.

    All is well. Thanks everyone for your help! =D
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    Which SSD did you go with? I've been looking at the RunCore Pro IV.

    Glad you got everything working!
  • BandrikBandrik Elkhart, IN Icrontian
    edited February 2010
    mas0n wrote:
    Which SSD did you go with? I've been looking at the RunCore Pro IV.

    Glad you got everything working!

    Thanks! =D I'm glad I could solve it just by reinstalling the OS (not too painful as I never really used the netbook so I had nothing installed and no files on it).

    The SSD I chose was highly recommended on the Woot.com forums for the particular model I bought, as well as another EeePC board I went to. It's called the Super Talent 32GB, model FPM32GRSE. You can find it here on Amazon.com, though I personally picked one up on eBay for only $82 (and free shipping) from this vendor.

    Compared to the sluggish 8GB SSD that came with my Eee PC 900, the Super Talent GRSE model is lightning fast. In fact the re-image of XP on the GRSE compared to the 8GB was about 4x faster (5m vs 20m) though I didn't time it exactly. And where XP used to hang when right-clicking something or going to web pages, running on the new SSD is snappy without any slow-down.

    I'm sure the 2GB RAM also helped. I used Transcend chips which I picked up on Amazon.com here. Which is ironic, because when installing this module for the first time is what corrupted my XP boot to begin with. But ah, whatever. At least it's working now.

    Oh, and for the RunCore Pro IV, I've heard great things about it. Considered it, but I didn't consider the speed boost to be worth their crazy-expensive price point. If you have the budget I say go for it, you won't be disappointed. But from my research, it seems the Super Talent drives are the best bang for the buck. Just be sure to look at the GRSE model, as their other model FPM32GHAE isn't as fast at the same capacity.
Sign In or Register to comment.