Windows

Second Slot Not Working After Memory Upgrade

Posted by on Mar 27, 2009 | 8 Comments

Gnomie Jim writes:

Hey, Chris!

I have a two-year-old Toshiba A205-S4607 running Vista Home Premium with 2 X 1G in the two available slots. I wanted to increase to 3G, so I purchased a 2G card (Black Diamond series) from Memory-Up.com. I took all the safety measures when installing it. The laptop recognized the new memory by showing that I now had 3G.

After four days I got a message that Windows had stopped working because of hardware, software, or a program issue and suggested I close and reboot in safe mode. After powering down, the computer would not come back on. The little blue power light on the front of the laptop was indicating the power came on and the fan sounded like it was running, but nothing came on the screen.

I removed the new 2G card and put my original 1G back in, but again, it wouldn’t boot up. It did boot up with only the bottom 1G card in its slot. I switched and tried the other 1G in the bottom slot and it booted up with that one as well. I again tried the matched pair (Samsung) in their slots and it would not boot up. I had to again remove the top card for the laptop to boot up.

So whenever a card is in the top slot… no dice on booting up. I was reluctant to try the 2G in the bottom slot for fear of damaging that slot as well. The 2G is 667 MHz, so it was supposedly compatible.

Instead of increasing my RAM by 1G, I have now decreased it by 1G. I downloaded a newer version of my BIOS from Toshiba (5.20) and still nothing. Memory-Up.com offered a refund, by that really doesn’t help the situation. It also offered to send a Samsung 2G card which I said I’d try. Have you (or any of your readers) ever heard of anything like this, and do you have any suggestions? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

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  • Bravehart

    If one likes to increase memory, you should always
    add the same capacity memory strip as the existing one’s?
    You did not mentioned how many slots were available for addition? If you have two slots only, than remove both
    existing 1G. and replace with 2G. strips. You now have an 4G. memory, which is probably way byond the capacity of what your motherboard can support? Vista 32 bit will support
    the 4G memory! It looks to me that you have a bios block,
    and I’m suprised that you did not fried the motherboard?
    Did you check your power requierement for those 2G strips?
    By doing what you did, you created an imbalance that
    may have serious consequenses?
    If this is not your primary system than replace both with 2G,
    If it does not work, you may have lost your waranty.
    Good luck.

  • The Soft Rock

    DDR2 can be run in two modes. The first is intended for a single memory card and the other for dual memory cards. However, when running in Paired mode, the memory needs to be the same size (preferably same make and part number as well) on both channels. Running two sized ram cards in Paired mode makes the memory controller on the motherboard work about 3 times as much with channel 2 trying to process twice as much memory addresses as channel 1. This is not an issue with DDR or what they like to call today DDR1. Basically you fried channel 2 on the memory controller. I am rather surprised even channel 1 still works. If you want to get 2G back, Try installing a 2G memory card in channel 1. Nothing but replacing the motherboard will fix this problem. And it was probably wise not to try the 2G memory card in the other slot, It probably was not damaged (the memory controller took the punishment) but you never know.

  • The Soft Rock

    Add on: Channel 2 fried from overheating (working twice as hard as channel 1). It would be kinda nice if somebody could figure out how to make a 1.5G stick or thereabouts.

  • The Soft Rock

    Add on Again: One 2G stick should not present a problem with overheating. The overheating was caused by a chip meant to read two same size memory sticks reading two different sized sticks.

  • http://www.goretsky.com/ Aryeh Goretsky

    Hello,

    I would suggest obtaining the replacement Samsung 2GB memory module and then installing it in the first memory expansion slot, leaving the second memory expansion slot empty, and then starting the system to see if it recognizes the full 2GB of RAM. If it does, power down and place one of the the 1GB memory modules in the second memory slot and apply power to the system. If all 3GB of memory are recognized, go ahead and run a program like MemTest86+ overnight to verify the 3GB configuration is stable.

    Regards,

    Aryeh Goretsky

  • jay

    I have a problem like this, but its on a gigabyte ga-n650sli-ds4l.

    i have 4 512mb ddr2 533mhz ram cards all the same, they all worked before but now the first two slots will not allow me to boot up, the 3rd and 4th slots work fine, can any1 sugest wtf happened?

    thanks.

  • jay

    with regards to my above post.

    i have checked the ram slots for dirt and and imperfections, also the soldering on the other side to be sure it wasn’t damaged when i changed computer cases (didn’t change any parts).

    im stumped, any help will be grateful.

  • Spike

    I had toshiba that had the same issue – it came with 3G, 2+1G the top slot stopped working without any upgrade or anything 1 minute i was working on it the next the screen went dead.

    I don’t think all the theories stated matters its just your luck at least in mine there was no interference with the ram and I had been using it for 15months before the issue.