Thanks to all the gentle people who kindly offer advice to those who are ignorant as I am. I am interested in hearing from anyone who has any other ideas besides the "take out the battery and completely discharge the CMOS by holding the power switch for 50 seconds, then put in your old RAM, plug in w/out a battery, and pray to the Motherboard" one below.

My other question is, have I likely blown up the new RAM by not removing said "dead" battery?

I have a 4-year old tablet laptop that was serving me well except that I needed more RAM to run Creative Suite 3. (Which of course I didn't realize when someone going out of business gave me their copy. Why the program even lets you install without the right RAM is another question for another day...)

I know how RAM installation works, and, as it happened, the machine had a totally dead battery (i.e., when it was unplugged there was no indicator light about the battery) so of course you know what's coming-- I did not even think about taking the battery out, and now when I try to boot up, I get nothing.

I saw some posts on other boards that suggest that you take out the battery and completely discharge the CMOS by holding the power switch for 50 seconds, then put in your old RAM, plug in w/out a battery, and pray to the Motherboard.

Since I am now reduced to using the net at the library, I am going to go back home and try this. Hopefully I will be back to you with a good result.

Thanks to all

Well let us know what happens but its not likely that you have buggered your RAM by removing the battery.

Its more likely to be a faulty or incompatible RAM. I would severely suggest that you place the 'old' RAM back into the machine and try booting it after having done that.

Going back to the question you ask about the program you have tried to install... the manufactureres quote what they see as the minimum amount of RAM to be used with their applications. You can run a program with less RAM but you may notice your machine will be slower then normal

Well, I tried using the old RAM right away, and still bupkis. I think I have blown up a $100 computer for which I now have $78 worth of RAM. And if I want to fix it I will need to get a new motherboard from Averatec that will cost ... you get the picture.

But you're saying, battery in or not, I probably haven't gorped up the RAM, only the motherboard?

I appreciate your kind and gentle support.

Cheers, S

is this a notebook or a desktop ?

Notebook