I bought pc133 sdram for my old compaq desktop because it was advertised as backwards compatible with the pc100 originally in it. but this ram causes blue screen errors and even slows it down. i put the old ram back in and it works fine. is there a way to make it work, like a setting change or jumper?
C-Man
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Could be bad RAM... or maybe those particular sticks don't provide the correct SPD information to the motherboard. Unfortunately, older computers can be quite finicky about RAM...
With generic/self-built machines you can go into the BIOS and fiddle with different memory timing settings, see what it's defaulting to compared to the older RAM and maybe manually set the new RAM to match. But with brand-name units like Dell and Compaq, those options are often unavailable- whatever it auto-detects is all you're allowed to use. It's worth taking a look.