Added 2 gigs of new ram from crucial, linux runs fine, been dual booting
since Vista was invented .. ;o) Vista won't boot now all the way. In
normal mode it stops after the little bar near the bottom of the screen
moves from left to right. never stops though. I waited 15 minutes and it
keeps on going, no hdd activity any more. Did a 2 stage vista mem test,
all normal. Safe mode stops at Loaded:
\windows\system32\drivers\avgrkx86.sys then a pause in hdd activity then
a brief burst and then nothing. Takes a power off to get out of any of
these. Last resort was to pop in my vista disk, ended up doing a restore
under the repair op system and of course that didn't do anything as my
last shutdown before adding the ram was good and clean. Any help sure
would be appreciated.

bios recognizes 3. something gig memory

I've uninstalled AVG and now in safe mode it'll stop at ~\crcdisk.sys

The crucial ram: 4 new 1 gig sticks, replaced my old ram.