kernel panic after replacing RAM

[andersond]

Hello !

i am running cauldron and a pc with 1 stick of 1gb RAM

I replaced it for 2 sticks of 256mb each and it did not boot. The message during boot was something like "kernel panic - not possible to mount root fs."

testing with the 1gb stick again it worked fine.

Is it a way to make it work with these new 256mb ram sticks without reinstalling the system? Should them work? Is there a possible of being a hardware issue within one of the ram sticks?

Thanks in advance!

Anderson

[martinw]

The first thing I would do would be to test the new RAM sticks. If you install the memtest86+ package, the next time you boot, you should find a "Memory Test" option in the boot menu. If you select this, it will then start running some very thorough memory tests. If you leave this running for an hour and it doesn't report any errors, you can be fairly confident you don't have a hardware fault.

[doktor5000]

There could be many reasons for it not working, timing problems if those are minimally different sticks, incorrect placing on the mainboard, memory errors ...
Just do as martinw already suggested, but test them one by one, and first make sure both are ok alone, then you can think about testing them together.

Unrelated, why do you want to downgrade your memory (just being curious) at all?