MSCONFIG royal screwup

[bozzle73]

I installed a new hard drive and 8MB (2x4) memory in the laptop yesterday. I did a full image restore with Macrium and everything was perfect. 

In noticed that only 2.something MB of the RAM was usable and went online to find out how to configure the system to recognize the rest of the available 8MB. I stupidly tried the following, found on Microsoft's website:

MSCONFIG

Advanced

Boot

Click to clear the Maximum memory check box, and then click OK.

restart

Well, I seem to have just about bricked the whole computer with this stupid stunt. When I tried to restart Windows wouldn't even load. 

Worse, I can't get the Macrium Reflect bootable rescue disk to load so that I can restore the system to before I did the MSCONFIG. 

Does anyone know how I can get this system back up and running? I really need step-by-step instructions at this point. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[CherylG]

Things I would try--

First- can you boot into Safe Mode by tapping away at F8 key? Start tapping immediately as the first HP screen starts fading-before Windows starts to load. If you get into Safe mode you may be able to use msconfig to change the memory setting.

Second- if Safe mode fails to load- remove the new memory and replace it with original. Try to boot with Macrium bootable disk again.

[bozzle73]

I can get into Safe Mode but don't know which option to choose to get to the msconfig settings, or what I would change them to.

As to re- installing my old hard drive (I think that's what you meant when you said memory), does that mean that I have ruined the new hard drive? I upgraded from 320GB to 1T .

[CherylG]

No I meant the memory.

[CherylG]

In Safe Mode run Msconfig and change the setting for memory back to original.

[bozzle73]

when I go into Safe Mode and hit enter, I get a scrolling screen that lists all the drivers that Windows is loading. It gets to the bottom of the page and just sits there with the message to "please wait." Nothing happens and I do a hard shutdown.

[CherylG · Accepted solution]

That usually means Safe Mode is hanging too. I would remove the new memory,replace with original and try booting from Macrium to see if that works. Or try Safe Mode msconfig  first with original memory.

[bozzle73]

THANK YOU SO MUCH! Sorry for screaming, but I'm just so happy. Okay, I removed the new memory board, started the laptop, inserted the Macrium disk, restarted, and am getting the same message that "Windows is loading files." 

Macrium Reflect has finally loaded! I will go through the installation of the sys image file to get the computer back to its configuration from 3 days ago. 

Now, may I insert the new 4MB once this is done? I will absolutely NOT mess with the msconfig settings when I'm done.

Thank you again!

[CherylG]

You definitely can try reinstalling the extra memory. If it gives a problem again at least now you know what to do.:)