melon

This is probably a rather simple question with a simple answer, but upgrading your RAM doesn't usually affect your existing OS installation, does it? I mean, I know some upgrades either screw up the XP activation scheme or work best when done after a reformat and reinstall, but can you just switch out your old RAM and put in new RAM without any major problems? Just wanted to make sure.

Melon

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muzikool

I've never experienced an issue where upgrading RAM affected the OS installation or activation.

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Mastershakes

Muzi is dead on. Upgrades away !!!!!

kcnychief

It doesn't affect the installation or activation, but if you increase or decrease the amount of system RAM, you may wish to review your page file settings after the upgrade is complete. Depending on if you let Windows manage it, or if you have custom values pre-set, this will need to be reviewed or your system will suffer speed degradation (sp?).

If you are going with the same physical amount, as long as the RAM is the same speed across the board, you should experience no issues.

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melon

Sounds good. I'm going from 512 MB (2 x 256 MB) Corsair RAM (non-matched pair) to 2 GB (2 x 1 GB) Corsair RAM (matched pair). Should be interesting if I can squeeze some last life out of this computer before I do my planned replacement at the end of 2006. I'll keep all of this in mind.

Melon

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kcnychief

Wow, that's quite an upgrade. Enjoy the speed increase

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muzikool

Yeah, 512MB to 2GB is rather nice. I went from 512MB to 1.5GB and loved the increase in performance.

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melon

Hehe...it was very simple, as expected. This should hopefully give me a nice boost!

Melon

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ming

As long as you're not using an OS that's based on 9X then you're fine. Users were limited to only 512mb of RAM with Windows ME which sux.

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melon

Windows 9x/ME is so awful that I haven't touched it with a ten-foot pole in six years. I was also happy when I realized that all of my hard drives were NTFS (hence, FAT32 free).

So no worries here.

Melon

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LeeJend

Actually, changing the amount of RAM on your system can force a telephone re-activation. But only if you have made several other changes recently.

Windows keeps a count of types and numbers of changes and if the total exceeds the limit during a set time span you get deactivated and get to make the phone call. If you make no changes for 120 days the change hsitory is cleared. I researched all this after troubleshooting a DVD problem kicked me into re-activation hell.

Note something as innocuous as swapping your primary and secondary HS and Optical drives or pulling a RAM stick to trouble shoot can count as 3 hits! The article tells you how to save off your activation so you can restore it if you have to swap a lot of hardware around when troubleshooting.

All the annoying details:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

A tool (xpinfo.exe) that lets you check how close you are to the limit:
http://www.licenturion.com/xp/

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Steevo

I hit the wall too figuratively speaking when swapping out between my old 9600XT and a X800GTO while I was doing BIOS upgrades and checks.

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autolycus

i have never had any problems with upgrading any computer components except for my mobo because of the drives like going from a via to a nforce that didn't quite work out that well for me but ram that is fine