Anytime upgrade choice

Turned into a fiasco when I upgraded my ram from 1GB to 5GB, all same specs.

System would not complete a boot. Finally had to pull the CMOS batter, disconnect the power cord then press the power button for a few seconds to drain the caps, put stuff back and power up. Got a CMS config error which I expected. Loaded defaults then set everything up again but Win 7 would n0t boot. I get the fireflies once then a reboot. Turned out to be a BSOD 0x00007B (I think, not exactly sure).

Doing a boot Repair didn't help, System Restore did not work. No idea what happened or why but it was painful.

Once again, Win 7 not allowing me to do a Repair Install unless I start it from a booted Win 7 killed me and I had to clean install. I still don't understand why this restriction is in place. Why not let me attempt a repair. If it doesn't work I've lost nothing but time and can then do a clean install.

At least I got to use my brand new shiny Win 7 Pro X64 with SP1 DVD

Current problem is hardware or BIOS as it takes 60 seconds when I power up before I see the first output from BIOS on the screen. Up until then all I have is a blinking cursor at top left of screen. Reboot works fine, no delay.

This is HP Workstation xw4400, 3.4Ghz P4 with two logical processors and (now) 5Gb of PC5300 ECC ram. I'll have to chat with HP and see if they have any idea. It's not a critical problem as this will be my new web server soon which never powers off but I'd like to fix it if I can.

Greg, I ran Startup Repair twice with no results. I really wanted to do a Repair Install over the existing install without losing data or installed software as I used to be able to do with XP.

Theog, I tried it with 2GB, 4GB and back to the original 1GB. In all cases Win 7 would no longer boot. I had to reinstall to fix whatever the problem was. I figured since I was doing that I would try it with the max amount of ram I had and it installed okay with 5GB.

I've since had a couple BSODs when the computer went to sleep. Disabled sleep and hibernate and it's running very well now.

Thanks, I'll play with it. I'm using the built in ATI FireGL V3300, what ever that is. I'll see what I can find.

Edit: Just noticed I was running an unsupported resolution/frequency.

I had 1024x768 @ 70Hz.
Monitor/video card supports 1024X768 @ 60Hz.

Changed it and will try sleep again, see what happens, now that I have a good backup.