Added new RAM that made computer slow, removed it and it's still slow

Question

I have Windows 7 32-bit and a Kingston DDR2 SDRAM DDR2-800 400 MHz 2GB RAM module.

The motherboard has two RAM slots so I added a new 2GB RAM module. This one was Kingston as well, and if I remember correctly it had the same speed. I don't have details of it right now but it was supposed to be compatible with the first module (actually, the OS recognized 4GB of RAM, as expected).

What happens: after turning the computer on, it stays 10-20 seconds without showing anything on the screen, until it finally shows the BIOS image and starts loading the OS. Apart from that, it is much slower than before, being quite notorius in games.

I obviously took out the module, but the mentioned problems persist. I don't care about those extra gigabytes of RAM and why they don't work (unlike other questions similar to this one), I just want to get back the previous speed.

I tried resetting the BIOS to its default configuration (Load Setup Defaults option) but nothing changed. I'm thinking about reinstalling Windows.

So my question is: now that I removed the extra module, how do I get back the speed (computer speed in general) I had before adding that module? Would formatting and reinstalling Windows accomplish this?

Answer 1

Sorry meant to put this as an answer...

if your computer hangs for 10-20 seconds before loading BIOS that's definitely a hardware issue it has nothing to do with your OS. You should try taking out the RAM and reinserting again, perhaps try a different slot or see if there might be dust on it. Also check if you might have disturbed other components while you were changing the RAM sticks, I.e. try reinserting your video card, etc. If it doesn't work try a different stick of RAM. It sounds like you disrupted something when you were changing the sticks, possibly because of static electricity or physically moving something.