I am having a strange problem with my fathers emachine computer. I noticed a month ago that his computer only shows 480mb of ram at boot and in the windows system properties. So I assumed that one of the mem modules on the stick that came with the computer had gone bad. Anyway tigerdirect was having a deal on memeory 19 bucks for another 512 stick. So I bought it for him and installed it, I left the old stick with 480 in it for a total of 996mb. Right away problems started showing up. Constant warning messages about unable to locate referenced memory at ... and programs like excel crash to desktop with no warning, and many drivers suddenly unistalled themselves including sound and video. So I run memtest and oddly no errors show up. Then I take out the old stick of memory and move the new one over, and oddly enough this new stick shows up as 480 also. It seems no matter what stick is in the first slot it shows up as only 480 mb. I have never in all my years messing with computers seen this problem before. I am assuming that the problem is with the motherboard, but I am wondering if anyone has any other ideas. Just so you know I have done a reinstall of windows and full virus scans, with no luck. The basic specs on the computer are emachines w2785 with amd 2700 and 996 mb ram.