Problem with new Inspiron 9300

[dutchgrl]

I got my Dell Inspiron with 512 MB of memory. I tried to upgrade it with another DDR2 stick and it did not work. I would get a blue error screen. I talked to Dell, they said it might not be compatible, but when they guided me throught the safe mode it looked fine. They told me that I might have to do a whole PC restore to fix the problem. It was a Corsair memory card. Has anyone had this problem? Do you know which memory cards would work for sure with this laptop?

Also, when I have no programs running it is using about 250 MB of ram. This seems very high. Is this normal? What can I do to reduce it? I already did the msconfig at startup and deleted all those files.

Thanks in advance!!

[dutchgrl]

I forgot to mention. I did make sure there is no spyware/adware on the computer.