[AliL]

Hi there, I know I have made another post recently, but this is concerning a completely different issue, so I thought it best to make a new topic.

I have a Toshiba Satellite A30-303 notebook with 512MB RAM installed.

This composes of 2 different modules, both made by Samsung, and both 256MB, and both 200-pin SODIMM DDR SDRAM modules.

However, one is a PC2100 module and the other is a PC2700 module, and I know that they both run at the PC2100 speed as that is the top speed the motherboard will run at.

The problem is this:

Recently I bought a Kingston 512MB PC2100 200-pin SODIMM DDR SDRAM module off of eBay (I know that wasn't the best plan to start with) as it fits the specifications of my laptop and, as far as I can tell should work with the notebook.

However on receiving it I put it into my notebook and on booting up the computer to Windows XP home edition, it got part of the way through the boot process and flashed up a blue screen of death for a fraction of a second and then restarted. Thinking this to be strange I double checked the details and from the specs, it should have worked. I then looked closer at the sticker on the module and plugged the model number into Google and the Kingston website to see what I could come up with, and according to the Kingston website it was a Dell module, so I emailed them to see why it wasn't working and they sent me a very unhelpful email not addressing my problem, but only giving me a link to RAM modules that according to them were the ones that were compatible with my computer.

Is there some underlying cause to stop the RAM from working with my notebook such as a firmware incompatibility (however I didn't think RAM used firmware) or is it just a broken module?

Many thanks to anyone who can help,

Ali L

Edited by AliL, 03 July 2007 - 11:25 AM.

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Hi AliL, welcome to Geeks to Go! Yes, it is good that you have started a different thread for this. It's highly likely that your RAM purchased off eBay is faulty, I can say that about all RAM purchased off eBay, why else would someone want to get rid of it? What you can do is download Memtest and run it overnight on your computer, if it brings up errors then your RAM is faulty. All the instructions on how to use it are here.

Good luck!

[Troy]

Hi AliL, welcome to Geeks to Go! Yes, it is good that you have started a different thread for this. It's highly likely that your RAM purchased off eBay is faulty, I can say that about all RAM purchased off eBay, why else would someone want to get rid of it? What you can do is download Memtest and run it overnight on your computer, if it brings up errors then your RAM is faulty. All the instructions on how to use it are here.

Good luck!

[gumby701]

If you know a friend with a Vista disk, that has a memory test thats very easy to get to...

[AliL]

Ok, I'll have a go with Memtest and report back with the results.

[AliL]

Well I ran the memtest86+ program after hours of searching for a FDD, lol, and when the wallTime reached 1 minute 30 seconds, it had already reached over 200000 errors. I guess I'll be sending the RAM back then.

Edited by AliL, 04 July 2007 - 11:15 AM.

[Troy]

Yes that's right, handy little test to have, I suggest you keep it in your computer resources. Any more problems, then let us know.

Cheers