I recently installed new RAM, and upon booting into windows- windows had mad a change or fix to my registry. I rebooted and i received an error message saying something about sysdata.xml. and a minidump folder. To my knowledge errors of this type relate to faulty memory. I disabled quickboot and ran MemTest - but everything checked out fine. Windows runs fine- but my CDRW drive won't behave properly. I can explore any data CD just fine, but when I put in a Program CD, it wont autoplay, and it will stop responding if i try to run the CD manually. I can instal some programs, but not others via CD. I installed the (windsows XP) service pack, and now windows takes about 3-5 minutes to boot up. I updated my motherboard bios as well- but nothing. I cant run scandisk either. Keep in mind that this is all following a clean install of windows xp, and a full format of the harddive. I put in my old trusty ram, but everything acts the same. also - i tried another cdrom drive but they all act the same way. I have a KT3 Ultra 2 CE Mobo- is anyone familiar with its bios? Any help would be MUCH appreciated as a computer without a CDRom drive is quite useless.

GUS

In your position, and with that many problems ... I'd suggest you reformat and install windows again, and leave the service pack alone.

I installed windows again- without formatting, and several times throughout installation - the cdrw drive couldn't find a file. I got around this by just opening and closing the cd tray- and it would eventually find the file.
It seems to me like my windows CD may be defective or my CDRW drive is malfunctioning. I unhooked my CDRW drive and used my older drive- and was able to install a few CD programs that I couldnt earlier- but the drive still acts screwy (the older drive)- which makes me think i might have a bad motherboard- or my bios settings are not configured correctly.
I'm going to try doing a clean install of W2K and see what happens. This whole mess could be driver issues with WXP.

Sounds messy. Why did you replace the memory in the first place? Were you having problems? Did you add more RAM alongside the existing or did you replace altogether? Have you checked that the memory is seated properly?

I had no problems with my RAM, I just wanted a smoother running system.

I need my computer to run some prety processor heavy programs like Painter 8 and the like. I had 256mb before, and purchased an additional 2 sticks of 512mb each of the identical type and brand. (there are 3 slots for memory, up to 3gigs) All the memory is secure. My system acts the same regardless of how much memory or what sticks I use (or combination of sticks, or combinations in different slots). I'm completely baffled because windows had been working perfectly until i put the new ram in- and it seems impossible to reverse the change that was made.
And yes- it is VERY messy... It takes my CDRom a few tries just to get the windows installation autoplay up. I havent installed W2K yet, but I will in the next few hours out of desperation.

see if dma is enable