Impressed by SuSE 8.2 I added more RAM to my computer. (a second hand athlon 2400xp, originally 256MB upgraded to 1GB, NVIDIA all in one sound/internet/graphics)

Anyway now keeps crashing - gnome won't start (panel error), KDE sometimes takes 3 times to load, applications crash), windowmaker crashed when using it with mozilla
etc etc.. The nature of the crashes is that computer restarts, other than in KDE where I get (error 11, sigsegv)

This is sort of a continuation of my thread "Krashing Konqueror" which recieved no responses, but things appear to have got worse since...

could this be due to the new RAM? or the YOU updates I installed, or the new monitor (SAMSUNG 172). Difficult to decipher as many changes at once

A reinstall actally has made things worse.

Should I try a different distro? Or remove the new RAM? or re-install again? >>>>

So far it appears windows is more stable. Even when I install it myself. I am pretty computer illiterate, and was attracted by the ethos of Linux. I shall not give up, as the computer was bought with the aim of learning linux. I would one day like to use Linux as my main OS, pleaee help me make that day closer

Thanks

I think the first thing to try is to remove any new ram you installed. Take it down to 256meg and see what happens.

some motherboards require RAM to be in a certain order (IE smallest chip in first bank) to work properly. Does everything look right before Linux starts? have you tried re-arranging the RAM chips?

with a newer board like that you shouldn't have to have any type of ram arrangment....the older boards around the pentium classic/pro era, you could of had 3 banks in your box, but some banks may only be able to support up to 128 and the third maybe only 64 for a very general explanation...this is not an issue nowadays, so i don't think you will need to switch ram to different banks according to chip size...

so in turn you could always try as suggested to take out the newly added ram, or even leave in the newly added ram and take out the 256 and see if the ram is defective...also as you said, you did some updates, so that could also be a possibility as why things are crashing....worse case scenerio, try re-installing your distro with all ram installed and see if the crashes are persistant..
.....and to cap this off, the monitor will have nothing to do with programs crashing.

Re-installed distro with ram - still crashed
removed the new ram and put the old 256 back in.
now seems to work fine

Thank you for your help and advice.

(it was the wrong specification of RAM i found out later)