Disclaimer: I have fried a piece of hardware or three... Remove the RAM Power up - Does it beep like crazy (or differently than before) or show the BIOS screen? If so: Power off - replace RAM - power up - does the problem go away? I've seen wackiness like you describe on a hardware level. It had nothing to do with the OS. No matter what bootloader, you should see (hear?) the post screen when you power up the machine... Multiple video cards have also given similar symptoms... Good luck, Chris