Intel mini RAM woes...

Ok, I'm pretty saavy when it comes to most things computer related but maybe I'm missing something on this one. I bought my Intel mini with the stock 512mb of RAM and decided I wanted to upgrade to 2gb. The price of RAM is fairly steep right now so I decided I would do this one stick at a time. I purchased my 1GB stick to get me going from Crucial (due to their reputation). I used their memory advisor to make sure I was ordering the correct memory for my machine and verified the memory matched what I ordered before it was installed. I installed the 1gb stick with one of the original 256mb sticks thinking I would maximize what I had available until I was able to purchase my second stick. After doing so I had nothing but problems. I kept getting spontaneous shutdowns and when booting up it would reboot itself sometimes 2 or 3 times before I could finally get to the desktop. So, I'm stumped. I've gone through and double checked that the memory was seated right, ran TechTool Pro 4, ran the Apple hardware test, reset my pram, reset my smc and even took out my 256mb stick to see if having an unmatched pair could be the issue. Everything looked fine and all tests passed. According to Crucial's website it is not "necessary" to have a pair of sticks in the mini to run properly. It even says I should be able to run different speeds and chip capacities. I was still getting the same result just the 1gb Crucial stick by itself. I have since put my 2 original 256mb sticks back in and all seems to be well. I know there is a possibility that I got a bad stick of RAM but I definitely have my doubts based on Crucial's reputation. I know how to handle computer components so I also highly doubt that I damaged the RAM. Is there something I'm missing? Do I need to have a matching pair of sticks (size and speed)? I'm racking my brain on this one, hopefully someone will be able to shed some light on my dilemma.

Okay, new problem... I'm starting to think now that maybe my RAM woes were not RAM woes at all. I'm beginning to think that perhaps I have a failing hard drive. Right away after purchasing my Mac mini I took the original 80GB hdd out and replaced it with a brand new 120GB 5400rpm Seagate hdd. I started having these random shutdown problems and then yesterday after having my new 2GB's of RAM installed for about a week or so (and working flawlessly), I got the screen that tells me that I need to hold down the power button to restart my computer. I do so and it goes to this terminal type screen and runs through all kinds of command lines. I restarted and desktop came back up so I did a couple software updates (1 Airport update, 1 Security update). After that finishes the mini restarts and it hangs at the grey screen w/the apple. So, I shut the computer down and restarted and this time it gets to the 'OS X starting up' screen and hangs when the status bar reaches the end. So, I shut it down and restart yet again. It goes on and on like this and finally ends up getting to the desktop after roughly 6 restarts. I quickly back up everything on my computer and try a few more restarts to see the progression of the problem and try to troubleshoot. At one point I heard the hard drive click 2 times. After another round of numerous restarts I get back to the desktop and by this time alot of my programs were getting the beachball when opened and would never function (i.e. - Disk Utility, System Profiler & Safari). I put my Mac mini OS X install disc in and restarted to wipe everything out and see if my OS got messed up somewhere along the way and was causing my problems. As soon as it boots from the disc I got an error box informing me that It cannot install the OS but allows me to access Disk Utility. I erased and did a 1X pass zero out. I restarted my machine and yet again it hanged at the grey screen with the apple. I restarted a couple more times and now it just tells me it can not install the OS and shuts itself down within a few seconds of this message.
So, this is where I'm at now... Can anyone else confirm that this sounds hard drive related vs. RAM related? The only variable that has changed recently has been the RAM and I refuse to believe that I got bad RAM twice in a row from a company as reputable as Crucial.
Help me AndyO, you're my only hope! (yes, that was a nerdy Star Wars reference)

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Message was edited by: mosk

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