SC4 suddenly freak out

[Geronimo 4]

Hi.
First off, I know my computer aint exactly up to date, I run on a compac presario Intel 2,2 Pentium 4 with a ti 4200 64 mb graphic card. But it kind of (used to) work really well without any major problems. I recently upgraded my ram from 512 to 1024 mb to maybe boost it up a bit. Shortly after I experienced serious performance issues with SC4, both lagging and freezing. I have run several clean up and defrags, RAM tests, cleaned up my plugin, and now I ended up with removing all of it except NAM and it still lags like crazy with 40 mb of plugins in medium tile within 20 sec. I dont know what to do, maybe I go .. Maybe not if someone can help, though...

[KingTitan 6]

I think you answered your own problem in the first line. If not? What exactly do you do when you start up SC4? ie...background tasks.

[tungston 19]

The extra memory should boost the speed of the game, that is if you installed the correct RAM modules?

[Geronimo 4]

Wow, thanks for quick replies!
Ok, my comp is really not THAT good, but it always worked well with SC4. Until now. After RAM upgrade. Everything else works fine. Before I could run SC4 (DE if I havnt mentioned) with 780 mb plugins on 512 mb RAM with minor lagging on higly dev medium tiles. These days its impossible even with setting on low all over and 40 mb plugin!
@King Titan: I disable viruscontol, firewall and screensaver. I dont shut down any prosseses (windows tells me not to, so I listen...)
@Tungston: Shure! No problem with RAM. (Btw paging file is set at recomended 1534, increaseing to 4096 doesnt seem to help much.) 

[tungston 19]

If all you did was install additional RAM and the problem started I would certainly suspect a bad, or mismatched module.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

When you upgraded your RAM, it should have been the same or faster.  A faster chip will run at the speed of the slower one.  This may not be true for your MOBO, however.  You might consider verifying that the RAM chips are matched.

[SC4BOY 20]

Remove the RAM youi put in and put your old mem back in.. does it go back or do you still have probs?

Did you ADD modules or did you REPLACE modules?

[Geronimo 4]

What I did was writing down the old specs and brought this to the shop and told them I would upgrade to 1 Gig and they gave me a stick that should fit the MOBO. (DDR dimm PC3200 1gb module). This info gives me nothing. As mentioned I am definitely NOT very smart with computers, I have run a mem test that says everything is fine. I will try to change back to the old stick (unfortunately I gave it away, so Ill have to get it back..) and see what happens. (I REPLACED the old one.)

I have got info that this is right RAM for MOBO, so that should not be it. 

Btw: CPU usage 100 %  running SC4 on a small (3x3 med tiles) region without development. Is that normal? Pagefile usage about 650 mb. 

Thanks for all replies!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

After you installed the memory, did you check over the BIOS settings to make sure they agree with your new stick?  When you boot your machine, enter setup mode during the initial tests and see.