Need Hep with Reinstalling OS

[Ayman Altounji]

I am having troubles upgrading memory onto the server and I suspect the OS is corrupted. Here's what I want to achieve:
It has 2SCSI drives, mirrored. The machine contains OS and print drivers (mainly functions as a print server). I would like to do some experiments by breaking the mirror, then do a clean-install of NT onto one of the hard drives and add the new RAM. This is to see if the new RAM works with the 'new' OS. However, this would my first attempt and not sure if there're steps that I might have missed.
By reading the above, I really need some advise from the experts out there as to what exactly the steps I ought to take.
My concerns are:
can I keep both HDD attached while I reload OS onto just 1 hard disk, or must I remove one of them first.
When do I need to use the Compaq SmartStart CD during the process?
If I leave both HDD attached after loading 'new' OS to one of them, how would the new RAM recognize which OS to use?
Sorry that I may sound like a 3-year-old here but I just want to be sure before anything goes wrong.
Thanks for any help in advance!!

[Ayman Altounji]

Hi
I suggest 1st to find out if the SCU utility recognized the full memory. (is it all compaq memory? Memory is more likely a hardware problem more than anything else. If the SCU is not reading all memory maybe its not Compaq and running diag off the smartstart will reveal faulty modules if it is all compaq. Diag is only for Compaq memory. Is it a mirror drive or hardware mirror? but I don?t see why loading another os to see how the ram works but if you do, a parallel install in a different folder than the sugg one in the installation will be the way to go about. Also check with the microsoft site for the parallel install procedures. Always make sure a backup is perform.

[Ayman Altounji]

Thanks for your reply:)
They're Compaq memory sticks. Here's what happened: after adding the new memory and reboot, the BIOS screen showed the change in RAM size. However, right before NT loads, we get the "STOP at 0x00005...Page Fault on Non_Paged_Area" error. We suspected it was bad RAM. Compaq replaced them for at least 3 times because they sent the wrong parts. They even replaced the motherboard which is still under warranty. The last part sent was confirmed to be the right one. We even tried adding a third hard drive (experiment) with newly installed NT and then added the RAM - the server recognized it and booted fine. That's why we think it might be the OS issue. I haven't tried the diagnosis yet. We set the mirror in the Disk Administrator in NT by selecting both drives and then Establish Mirror. Backup is performed nightly. Is it possible that the hardware SCSI drives themselves were causing this trouble??

[Ayman Altounji]

((Is it possible that the hardware SCSI drives themselves were causing this trouble??))

There is an option rompack for hard drive available from Compaq sp17870. check the following link:
http://www.compaq.com/support/files/server/us/download/13425.html
That will take care of the hardware firware and will help performance of the drives. Hope it help.
cb

[Ayman Altounji]

Thanks for the info. How to find out if my SCSI drives are using which driver version before I install the one you suggested? Thanks again.