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RAM Upgrade


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#1
antisocialbutterfly

antisocialbutterfly

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Upgraded my RAM from 2 x 512K at 266 MHz to 2 x 1G at 667 MHz. Alienware Area-51 M-5700 with 2 RAM slots, 2G is supposed to be the max capacity. However, when installed, only 1G of memory is being seen by the PC.

Ran a couple of on-line memory scanners and they indicated only the first position was occupied. Thought perhaps my other new strip was bad? So for the sake of experiment I reversed the position of the 2 strips and re-scanned. Still showing the first position occupied.

Don't understand what this means, other than perhaps there is a setting somewhere I need to adjust.

Can't call Alienware support as I am beyond warranty period. Any suggestions? Perhaps I should remove 1 strip at a time to check individual function, but it seems to me they are both functional.

Strips are Patriot DDR2 PC5300 dual SO-DIMM.

The machine is running faster than before on just the one strip, I suppose because of the higher bus-speed. But that's not the point, eh?
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#2
Titan8990

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Check your bios to see if it shows up there (usually F2 or del on startup). Do you know if before it showed you had less than 1024mb RAM before you switched? I would try like you said one stick at a time first. Also I would try putting the old sticks back in and see how much you are rated at. I had trouble finding information about your laptop but I know intregrated graphics take some of your RAM but 1gb is too excessive for that.

Are you sure that the RAM you had before was 266mhz? That would have made it DDR and your new RAM DRR2. I didn't even think DRR2 RAM fit in a DDR slot though.

Edited by Titan8990, 09 April 2007 - 02:11 PM.

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#3
antisocialbutterfly

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Actually -- I just fixed it on my own (after almost an hour of farting around with it).

Removed 1 stick (powered down and rebooted before and after each of these steps), had 1G RAM. Replaced that with the other stick, had 1G RAM. Moved that to the other slot, had 1G RAM. Replaced that with the other stick, had 1G RAM. Thus eliminating RAM failure and RAM slot failure.

Replaced both sticks and rebooted again -- voila, I have 2G RAM. I gues the first couple of times I did this (because the first time it read only 1G, I swapped them between slots and retried) I didn't seat one of them snugly enough to connect.

(BTW, according to the fact-sheet that came with the machine, the original memory was DDR2-SDRAM, 2 x 512K at 266 MHz, PC4300.)

Anyway, I'm self-repaired and happy. Thanks for the support anyway!

Edited by antisocialbutterfly, 09 April 2007 - 02:31 PM.

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