i have a pc chips m81odlu motherboard with a 1gb ram limit. well i thought i would test this limit and put a 1gb ddr stick in one slot... well that worked. well then i thought ill put a 256mb stick of ddr ram in also and as soon as i did this my computer shut down and wont turn back on. is my motherboard fried or can this be a reset timer or what... yes, yes i know your supposed to power off before connecting any new hardware but i guess i was exited so i got in a hurry and forgot to power down first...

the troubleshoot: i have taken the memory out and put my old memory back in : didnt work
i have un hooked everything and gave it about five minutes to reset and hooked everything back up : didnt work
i pulled the cmos battery out and put it back in : didnt work


through all of this when i turn the pc on it has power to the cdrom the hdd and the cpu fans but no beep no bios screen nothing??? wwhat should i do im desperate here

a) DDR needs to be installed in matching pairs. If its got a 1gb limit you should really have two 512mb sticks.

b) "added memory with power on ". That was stupid wasnt it. you probably fried your motherboard.

unplug the power cable at the back, then take out the CMOS battery and leave it for 10 minutes.

However, jbennet's ponit b) is probably spot on, though I've never heard of any one doing that so I don't really know.

Some servers dont mind you hotswapping CPUs, drives, memory while on, but for most desktops it = certain death

infraction time.