That, of course, was not an acceptable solution and I started investigating. First, I removed many external connections, USB drives, etc. That did not help. Then I removed the two new sticks of memory. Everything went back to normal. I could shut down in the evening and start it with no problems in the morning. When I swapped the old pair of sticks with the new set, problems started again. I made a couple of calls to Corsair, they guided me to testing the memory sticks using a freely available program. During these  tests, i determined that one of the sticks was not fully cooperating. During my conversations with Corsair tech support and additional reading on their Web site, I learned that running four sticks of memory may put more stress on the motherboard.

I contacted Corsair for an RMA for the new pair of memory sticks, within an hour I had all the instructions to send them back. I packaged the memory and mailed it back to Corsair. In a few days, I called and spoke with a customer service rep and asked if I could swap four 1GB sticks for two 2GB sticks. This, they call “advanced replacement”. She told me that they would do that but I had to send in the other two sticks of memory. Obviously that was not a solution as I would be without a computer for quite some time. Then she offered another solution, I could give my credit card number and if I did not return the two 1GB sticks they would charge my card for the new set they would send to me. No problem, I gave my card number.

Yesterday, I reeceived the pair of 2GB memory sticks, installed them and turned off the computer at night. This morning, I am very happy to report that my computer started with no problems at all. I am a happy camper. I will now pack the old pair and ship it back to Corsair to eliminate the charge. This has been a very pleasant support experience for me, thanks Corsair.

Related posts:

1. Extra Memory for my Desktop
2. Munki See, Munki Do: Display Calibration
3. A New Computer

This morning I added extra 2GB of RAM to bring the total memory to 4GB total. I made sure that I purchased the same type of memory as the originals, Corsair TWIN2X2048 from NewEgg.com. NewEgg is a great place to buy stuff, they really care about their customers. I have a story to prove it.

After installing the memory I did a Google search on whther further steps were necessary. The properties of my computer showed the total memory as 3.25GB, but I wanted to make sure. Good thing I did. There is a file in the root directory of the boot drive, typically drive C:, called boot.ini. It instructs Windows XP on special steps of features to enable during the boot time. There appears to be two relevant soft switces that may need to be added, they are /PAE and /3GB. They are simply added to the end of a line in the boot.ine file. So, my boot.ini line looked like the following, your boot.ini file may be different:

Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /PAE /3GB

The parts in red are what I added based on my readings on Microsoft and other Web sites. There does not seem to be one correct answer that fits all, so I added these switches in different combinations and checked how much RAM the system reported when I went to the properties of My Computer, and how much RAM Photoshop reported. The amount of RAM reported by the system remained at 3.25GB with each combination, /PAE alone, /3GB alone, both present. Oh, if you add both switches /PAE needs to come first, as I read on one of the sites.

When I checked the amount of memory Photoshop reported, there was a definite change. The table below shows the reported RAM by the system and by Photoshop.

In the end, I left the line as shown above with /PAE and /3GB switches on.

There is another matter, the setting in the BIOS. I built my computer using an ASUS P5K WS motherboard and an Intel QX6700 CPU. One of the settings in the BIOS is called “Memory Remapping” and it can be enabled or disabled. Based on what I had read on various Web sites, I tried that feature turned on or off with no effect on the available memory. So, I left it the way it was and it is now enabled.

The addition of memory made a noticeable difference, not only in Photoshop but all the programs seem to load faster. I can comfortably run Lightroom 2.0 and Photoshop CS3 both of which start up rather rapidly. I bought the memory for $80 with a $30 rebate. I think this will be $50 well spent.

Related posts:

1. Extra Memory for my Desktop: Update
2. Munki See, Munki Do: Display Calibration
3. A New Computer