i'm going to try a second gb of suspected good ram in parallel, to close off the first two slots.
this board can take 8 gb of ram, but it's running a 32-bit os (and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future), so i put 4x1 gb sticks of gold-plated ocz in there, but i built it in 2007, so it's getting a little bit old.
i've had to rescue it several times, and i've put a bd-r in it and swapped a few things around, but i've only ever had to replace one of the four hard drives in the machine over the last fourteen years. that's it. so, let's hope the ram is fine, after all.