Apparently most MacBook Pro's can handle 16 gigs, so that's possible. You might have got a bad stick of ram, by all means swap it with a known good stick of ram and see if that fixes your problem for right now. You are sure that your Mac can handle 16 gigs of ram fine, correct? You seem to have the correct type of ram for your machine, so no problem there. Macs are kinda fussy about the Ram they like.
