So apparently ECC RAM kills Dell motherboards

[zeroARMY]

So I work in a small time PC repair shop. A few days ago I'm "optimizing" (aka uninstalling crap/removing startup items) this nice lady's computer, a 3 year old Dell. I notice that she only has 512mb ram, and call her up and tell her that adding some more ram to make it 1gb would help quite a bit, and would only be like $20 extra.
She says go for it, and I start looking around the shop for some ram to use. We have TONS of ram laying around, I have no idea where it comes from, but most isn't new, so we sell it dirt cheap. I find a 1gb stick that matches the specs of her old ram, PC2 4200.
I pop it in and expect a boot. Nothing on screen. No POST or beeps. The rest of system seems fine though, PSU, CPU fan, hard drive, optical drive are working. Then I pull out the ram and see ECC written on it in smaller letters.

Now I'll summarize, I tried at least 15 other sticks of ram, original ram, no ram, naked boot, cleared CMOS, removed battery for a few hours, EVERYTHING, but still nothing.

Guess I killed this nice lady's computer with stupidity. Fucking Dells.

Any similar experiences?

 

[Dangman]

Ouch.

 

[serpretetsky]

does the computer not post anymore even with the chip out?
edit: nvm, i need to learn to read. sucks. Wouldn't think an ecc chip would fry anything, just not work

 

[spine]

Seems like a coincidence to me.

I've never heard of or thought that putting ECC ram into a motherboard would kill it. Even if it wasn't built for ECC ram.

No POST codes indicate dead cpu or mobo though, so probably the motherboard died for some reason. Most likely you disturbed something. Maybe there were some tenuous solder joints that you finally severed after years of wear. Last straw kinda thing.