There are several classic problems related to memory on Linux
systems.
1) There are some buggy motherboards which cannot properly
deal with the memory above 16MB. Consider exchanging
your motherboard.
2) You cannot do DMA on the ISA bus to addresses above
16M. Most device drivers under Linux allow the use
of bounce buffers which work around this problem. Drivers
that don't use bounce buffers will be unstable with
more than 16M installed. Drivers that use bounce buffers
will be OK, but may have slightly higher overhead.
3) There are some motherboards that will not cache above
a certain quantity of memory. If you have one of these
motherboards, your system will be SLOWER, not faster
as you add more memory. Consider exchanging your
motherboard.
All of these problems can be addressed with the "mem=XXXM" boot option
(where XXX is the size of RAM to use in megabytes).
It can also tell Linux to use less memory than is actually installed.
See the documentation of your boot loader (LILO, loadlin, etc.) about
how to pass options to the kernel.
There are other memory problems which Linux cannot deal with. Random
corruption of memory is usually a sign of serious hardware trouble.
Try:
* Reducing memory settings in the BIOS to the most conservative
timings.
* Adding a cooling fan.
* Not overclocking your CPU.
* Having the memory tested in a memory tester or exchanged
with the vendor. Consider testing it with memtest86 yourself.
* Exchanging your CPU, cache, or motherboard for one that works.
* Disabling the cache from the BIOS.
* Try passing the "mem=4M" option to the kernel to limit
Linux to using a very small amount of memory.
Other tricks:
* Try passing the "no-387" option to the kernel to ignore
a buggy FPU.
* Try passing the "no-hlt" option to disable the potentially
buggy HLT instruction in your CPU.
Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.