Gateway is particularly evil about providing memory facts.
Better to go to someone like www.crucible.com to learn which
types of 256 memory is required.

For example, same size memory in nine chip or two chip
configurations; and other differences. To you, difference
should be transparent. But computer hardware accesses
memories differently. BIOS should solve that identification
for you.

Memories have a single pin that tells computer what kind of
memory it is. However many Gateway BIOSes are not properly
programmed and will not be corrected by updates. Some Gateway
motherboards only understand nine chip memory. Even worse,
Gateway cannot be bothered to inform you which memory will and
will not work.

Look. Any decent computer vendor also provided
comprehensive diagnostics for each machine - for free.
Gateway does not. No diagnostics and their inability to even
report which kind of memory works in their machines are but
some reasons why Gateway is no longer on my recommended list.
Add to this - even their technical support does not understand
difference exists between two chip and nine chip memory!

Goto to crucible.com to learn which type is acceptable for
your machine. Don't even waste time with Gateway support or
their 'tech unfriendly' website - that does not even provide
diagnostics for your machine.

Customer support tech claimed he had access to more
information than I did. So I had him read from his screen.
From memory, I interrupted his sentences and finished them.
Gateway customer support is that technically ignorant. That
website contained little useful technical facts.

wrote:
I have a Gateway Athlon 700 with 584MB of memory. 1 256MB SDRAM chip
with ECC, 2 128MB chips, non ECC. Got 2 256MB SpecTek Non ECC chips
from my brother from his old computer. Replaced the 2 128 chips with
the 2 256MB chips, figuring no problems would occur. Lo and behold,
boot the system up and get:

Windows could not start because of an error in the software.
Please report this problem as :
load needed DLLs for kernel
Please contact your support person to report this problem.

Take the 2 chips out, problem fixed, boots up fine. What about these
chips would make the system fail? They should be compatible with my
system.