No probs, JM!
I have spent the last half an hour browsing the ASUSTEK website. It seems that me and everyone else with a P5N32 series mobo who tries to run 4GB has the same problem. There are countless posts describing precisely my problem, even down to symptoms such as music playback becoming j-i-t-t-e-r-y the same as I discovered mine does since last posting here.
I then had an idea; I know memory should be installed in balanced pairs but I can only address 3.25GB of my 4GB anyway so I wondered what would happen if I simply removed one DIMM leaving 3x1GB behind. The result?
- BIOS detects 3GB :-)
- XP addresses 3GB :-)
- PC appears totally stable :-)
- PC runs with its usual blazing performance whether I am hitting the RAM with just the .5GB or so footprint of XP or near maxed-out with 2.8GB during intensive video rendering :-)
Video rendering was actually the reason I upgraded the RAM because large projects were slowed by swapping out to disk, so for the sake of "losing" .25GB of absolute ceiling, I'm happy.