Adding Memory

[Ayman Altounji]

I'm trying to add memory to two Proliant 5500R's. They are currently configured with 640mb, with 4x32 in slots 1-4, and 4x128 in slots 5-8. I ordered the 512mb kit that's the exact same memory as slots 5-8 (part# 241773-B21) to put in slots 9-12.

Problem is, when I installed the memory, the server wouldn't boot, it wouldn't even do a POST test! Just 2 long beeps, which indicates the system didn't think any memory was there. I checked, double checked, and triple checked to make sure everything was seated properly. No luck. Then when I removed the memory and tried to restart, still no POST test! I did this in both servers with the same result. Eventually after a few restart attempts it worked and the servers are back to normal.

Is there some system that I can test the memory in without risking my production servers?

[Ayman Altounji]

Out of curiousity - did you try removing the 4x32MB modules and just using the 128's?

[Ayman Altounji]

I left the 32's in ... do the banks have to match each other also? The documentation is only specific about memory within banks being the same, not across banks....

[Ayman Altounji]

The first 2 slots on each bank needs to have the same type, speed, size of the memory. Usually memory would cause the server to go down. If this is the bad memory you and remove them and put the original memory back. Server should come up fine. Certainly if you have a staging or test server with a memory testing software you should be able to verify if those memory are good.