RAM has gone from 2gb to 256mb after blue screen issue.

[Vix]

Here's what happened from what I can remember (I regret not writing this down in detail, what it said has quite literally flown out of my head): I suddenly had a blue screen as I was watching a football match on my computer, I thought, okay, this has happened before, although it's not a frequently occurrence, so I just rebooted as usual.

Then I got a blue screen again, and it mentioned something about my RAM, I think. That it was going to turn it off for safety? I can't remember, unfortunately. Edit: It said "Decreasing available memory" and "Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility"  As I was going to try load up my computer again, I had one of those black screen's with white text as if you were going to go into safe mode, it gave me a number of options and I chose something like "start up normally" which was at the bottom, it said to choose that if you didn't know why you were being brought to that screen.

Now, I'm back on my account and my RAM is now 256mb (I checked at run > /dxdiag) and I previously had 2gb RAM before this happened (two 1gb RAM sticks that I only bought two months ago.)

I'm baffled really. Are my RAM sticks dead? The main point of this thread is that I'd like my 2gb RAM back if possible.  256mb is a nightmare!

I haven't tried anything to solve it or figure out what went wrong, because I genuinely haven't a clue where to start or what to search for. This has never happened to me before.

I'm on Windows XP home edition, CPU 2.53GHz, if there's anything else you need to know, please tell me.

Thank you.

[Azzaboi]

Your computer might have been hit by a power spike which running which damaged the memory and caused the crash. 

Your system on reboot has a memory check and detected a read / write error on one or more of the memory sticks.
It sounds like it's avoiding using them 'Decreasing available memory', rather than becoming unstable.

Windows Memory Diagnostic
This application from Microsoft you can download and install onto a disc, then boot the computer using it.
It will take a while but scan your computers memory to check for errors/corruption when accessed.
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

If the memory is dead, your'll have to work out which one(s) and replace with compatible RAM. Check to see if your computer's RAM is still covered under warnanty, you might simply get them replaced for free as covered by being 'faulty'. Invest in a surge protector for your computer's power, might be a good idea to for future prevention if it was caused by a spike.

[Vix]

Oh joy. 

I swapped the sticks around to see what would happen, and my computer came up with a blue screen and mentioned some kind of registry error. So, I've removed one of the sticks but I'm still on 256mb RAM + I get the same issue I had mentioned in my first post whenever I reboot.

I'll go do what you mentioned tonight.