Memory Upgrade Causes Kernel Panic

[jkm2a]

I recently installed Fedora 7 on a Compaq EVO N600C laptop with 256Mb RAM. It installed successfully but seemed to run somewhat slowly, so I picked up another 256Mb of RAM for it. The BIOS recognizes the RAM OK and doesn't seem to have a problem with it, but Fedora 7 won't boot with it - gives a Kernel Panic error message. Is there something I have to do to let Fedora recognize the extra RAM, or is the problem most likely caused by a hardware incompatibility? The RAM I bought did not specifically mention Compaq, but it is the same speed and the other specs appear to be the same as the original 256 Mb, although it's not the same brand. Any suggestions?

[leadgolem]

Sounds like a bad ram stick. If you have another system you could burn a disk with for testing, give this (http://www.memtest86.com/) a try and see if you get any errors after one complete pass.

As long as the speed, type, and number of pins matches the brand shouldn't make any difference.

[jkm2a]

Yep. looks like it's either bad RAM or this RAM isn't Compaq-compatible. I am at work and took a 256Mb stick out of a similar laptop and it's working fine. I think Compaq memory may be a little different regarding parity or error checking, not sure, but looks like I need to send this stick back if I can. Thanks for the input!