detected ram halved after bios upgrade

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

hi everyone I've got a strange problem here:
after having: firstly installed a new bios and, not happy, flashed the old one, the ram detected has dropped to from 256 to 128Mb (in both cases)
I desperately need more memory but I dont' want to buy a new 256Mb stick to get only 128...
any ideas?
a really sad pc user

[Rainbow]

Clear CMOS.

well I did clear the cmos just before flashing the bios...
If I cleared it again, what would happen?

[Rainbow]

It's possible that the new BIOS stores the memory size (and also some other configuration) data in CMOS in different way than the old one. That's why clearing CMOS is recommended after BIOS update.

I've just cleared the cmos again, with no success....it still detects 128 mb.

[ajzchips]

Try reinserting your DIMMs.

Sorry, done that as well (I've actually put the RAM in a different position...)