split141

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I was running with FC7 2.6.23 fine on my Dell Inspiron 6000 with
512MB RAM. It was a dual-boot system with XP/Linux.

Then I put in two 1G sticks of Dual Channel DDR2 PC2-5400 677Mhz RAM.
After installing the 2G RAM, XP came up fine.

Then I booted up on Linux but could not Add/Remove Software. Was
getting an error saying there is another instance already running.
I would see Package Manager on the task bar but disappear after few
minutes. Thought the Linux installation got corrupted, and tried to
install Linux afresh, but that hung at "Installing boot loader" stage.
After putting back the old 512Meg RAM, was able to re-install Linux,
am currently at 2.6.23.15-80.fc7. However, if I put the new 2G RAM,
I cannot bring up Software Updater. Not sure what else is not
working, though I able to come up on Linux, browse the web, etc.

Trying to figure out if this is software/driver issue, or if the
memory itself is not compatible with the system. Dell recommends
PC2-5300 DDR2 memory, mother board does not support Dual Channel,
but Dell tech support said I should be fine with PC2-5400, and XP
seems to be fine with the new memory.

Appreciate any suggestions.

lazlow

I would run memtest86 for a couple of hours. Since the memory is the only thing that has changed it is most likely to be the problem. The difference in the way that windows/linux use the memory would explain why you are not seeing an immediate problem in windows.

split141

Thanks for the memtest recommendation.

I ran memtest for over 3 hours, and it took more than 2 hours to complete the first pass. There were NO errors. Exited from the test,
let the system reboot and walked away. After an hour, I came
back and opened Add/Remove Software. First try, I got the same error,
but I tried a second, third, and fourth time and it worked. This is
the first time I had success doing this with the new RAM. I will keep
an eye on this post any new findings.