PXE boot with RAM?

[cooka]

Hi all,

I have a about 80 machine that are running XP - all offline & not on a domain.

I am trying to boot them to the network which I have only successfully been able to do one one of the machines. They all have identical hardware, the ONLY difference is the RAM stick which is a Kingston KVR533D2N4/1G 1Gb DDR2 DIMM CL4 With this stick of ram, they will not boot to the task sequence boot menu. It pulls down the correct boot image, and they the screen goes blank.

 

I have been able to boot with a different stick of memory, which is a Transcend 1gb DDR2 553 DIMM CL4...

 

I have never come across this before... has anyone else? Or have a fix / any suggestions?

 

Many thanks

[southhamster]

Worth a check for BIOS upgrades? Some of the RM Ones had all kinds of weird problems which were to RAM but got fixed with an upgrade. If it will do it, see if it will take RAM in the other slot. Also, can you try pxe from a boot menu or in bios setup rather than F12 right at startup. Good luck!

[nullensc]

Hi, have you checked they all have the same version of BIOS?

[southhamster]

Oh yes, what make are the machines /motherboard

as someone on here may have had the same problem

[Oaktech]

I thought most machines required 2gb of ram to PXE boot successfully? Try 2x 1gb sticks and see if it helps.

 

Sadly, it may just be time to upgrade a bit.

[cooka]

Thanks for the replys people. I have found that for a certain stick of ram the bios detected only 512RAM, but for the other stick (with the same serial and everything...) it detects 1gb (roughly). PXE boots fine with that amount of RAM.

 

The recommended RAM for PXE is 512 minimum - depending on your boot image size.

 

An upgrade sounds like a very good idea to me...

Thanks again

Edited November 20, 2015 by cooka