Second Slot Not Working After Memory Upgrade
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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!
- 4GB PC3-10600 1333MHz DDR3 DIMM Dual Channel Memory Kit
- 2GB PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 SODIMM Memory
- 16GB Extreme III SDHC Card
- 8GB Extreme III SDHC Memory Card
- 4GB PC2-5300 DDR2 DIMM Memory Kit
- 16GB Cruzer Micro U3 USB Flash Drive
- 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo Card
- 16GB II SDHC Card
- 2GB PC3-8500 1066MHz DDR3 SODIMM Memory
- 8GB Extreme III SDHC Memory Card w/Reader
- 32GB Cruzer USB Flash Drive
- 2GB PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 DIMM Memory
- 512MB PC800 RDRAM RIMM Dual Channel Memory
- 8GB SDHC Memory Card
- 4GB microSDHC Card
- 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SODIMM Memory
- 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SODIMM Memory Kit
- 4GB SDHC Memory Card
- 2GB microSD Card with miniSD and SD Adapters
- 16GB Extreme IV CompactFlash Card
- 16GB microSDHC Card
- Ballistix 4GB PC3-10600 1333MHz DDR3 DIMM Dual Channel Memory Kit
- 1GB PC2700 333MHz DDR DIMM Memory
- 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2 DIMM Memory Kit
- 16GB Turbo Secure Digital High Capacity Card
5 Comments
Bravehart
March 30th, 2009
at 7:46pm
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
March 30th, 2009
at 8:33pm
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
March 30th, 2009
at 8:42pm
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
March 30th, 2009
at 8:45pm
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.
Aryeh Goretsky
March 30th, 2009
at 10:06pm
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