Issue with RAM. (Moved from XP)

Hi,

Last summer I bought an extra 1Gb RAM from Crucial in order to speed up my computer. Until recently it worked like a charm, but 3 weeks ago I started to notice my computer slowed down considerably. At first I thought it was due to lack of hard-drive space, but had no time to correct this until today. After clearing and defragging the hard-drive, there was no discernible change in speed.

I looked about on the internet, and saw that doing a registry check could sort out speed issues (although by this time I already suspected the RAM was at fault), so I performed this diagnostic using Reg Cure, all to no avail.

I then performed the usual memtest, booting from a CD I burned using cdburn.exe (incidently when I was writing the file to cd using cdburn, it could not synchronize cache fully, saying error-rejecting/ejecting, or something like that. I didn't think this would be a problem, and when the CD worked I assumed it didn't). The test kept on shutting down before completion. After this occurred a few times, it finally returned an error message saying something about Error found, max 30 min 30 average 30, before I had to turn it off. I checked this and rechecked this and each time it occurred during the 2nd or 3rd tests.

I then removed the memory I had put in last summer, and tested it again. This time it reached test 7 or 8 before shutting down.

The computer still works fine, it is just unbearably slow in starting up, turning off and everything in between. Any suggestions??

Also I read a thread which seemed to have a similar problem, and was eventually solved by cleaning the fan, but I have no clue how to perform a procedure like that!

Computer:
Compaq nx8220
Intel Centrino
ATI X-something 64mb Graphics
1.3Gb RAM (1Gb from Crucial, 256mb from the original computer)


Thanks for any help!