Computer Not Reading New Ram Installed

hi everyone, as i received my tax refund, i decided to upgrade my computer. i bought a new harddrive, dvd burner n 1gb ram ddr. as i installed everything and turned my desktop back on, i notice that it was taking longer to boot. i right click on my computer went to properties and notice that instead of saying 2 gb of ram it only read 512 ram. my motherboard is a dualchannel motherboard that can take upto 4 gb's of ram. this computer period is not that old, i build it in november. the dvd burner installed fine as the computer recognized it but i still have not had to chance to burn a cd or dvd with it because i had to go to work. as per for my hard drive. my computer did not recognize my new harddrive at all. the harddrive is connected to the motherboard with an ide cable and its receiving power from the powersupply. i also put it as my slave, but wen i go to my computer and double click on it so i can see my second harddrive picture there, nothing seems to appear. everything seems to be connected right because when i first put the hardrive i did not put it as my slave so my computer did not boot up because it was recognizing my new harddrive as the master. can someone please help me with this problem. thanks,

DDR 2 comes in two types. One for dual-channel boards, and one for non-dual channel.
You sure you purchased the right type?
I recently bumped into a similar situation, where the sales staff were pushing 1gb PC2 5300 for a great price.
I read the package details and looked up my motherboard, before making the purchase……… and didn't.
It was for dual-channel, and would not have been recognized on my older motherboard.

(dual-channel DDR 2 often has a shiny metalic casing, while non-dual-channel does not (the board and chips are visible))
__________

RE: your new Hard Drive:

XP "should" recognize it and assign it a Drive Letter designation.
if it doesn't………..

GoTo:
Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management

Post back to tell us what you see there in the graphical display of detected Drives

Best Regards

hi dough, actually the 1 gb ram that i bought is a dual channel as it comes with the silver cover, but i also have two 512mb rams that are not covered which were the ones that my computer was previously running with. before i made the purchase i saw by motherboards box and it said that it has a dual channel ddr slots for the ram.what if i just switch one of the 512mb rams to the slot where the 1 gb is and put the one gb ram in the slot where i took the 512mb ram. would you think that would make a difference? what i see weird is that before i had 1 gb of ram with two 512 sticks but now it does not even say 2 gbs or 1 gb it says just 512 ram. what would cause that problem? also when i get home from work i will check the harddrive situation again. thanks,

Take the new RAM stick out and run a Scan over at Crucial.com with only your original RAM sticks installed as they were originally. It will tell you what type of RAM your machine allows. Make sure your new RAM is the type that is called for. Changing which slots you install the RAM into, may be of help, but Dual-Channel is designed to run in "pairs". So you would need identical sticks in, for instance slot one and slot three. or slot 2 and slot 4. Having a single stick in one of the two paired slots, may be causing you the difficulty. I've not had direct experience with the exact situation you describe, so take note of that as you consider my ideas here. Best Regards

ok i still have not gone to the website to check the kind of ram memory that my computer uses but i did change the memory around (slot 1: 512mb slot 2: 1gb slot 3: 512mb slot 4: empty) on the dual channel ddr slots.when i booted the computer it read only one gigabyte instead of two. i believe that the 1 gb ram is the one i need though.

New HardDrive

i went through your steps and was able to initialize it and i am formating it now. I also wanted to ask you, my primary HHD is 160 gb but it says that ther is 21 gb unallocated. is there some way that i will be able to use that extra 21 gb's?

Read your MotherBoard manual or consult the machine's website. It "may' be that one or more of the dual-channel slots can support an individual/non-paired stick………. or not. Final answer will depend on the MotherBoard specs. Best Regards