And now a RAM problem. Flash BIOS?
Posted by chicken n peas on 2010-01-2 11:20:16, Saturday|
Sighhh... My computer woes never end... I've got a laptop about 5 years old with two memory slots. I've been running a half gig in each slot since forever, and due to some larger programs I've installed lately, I felt I really needed to go to a gig each (2 gigs) in hopes of that solving some sluggishness. So I go to the memory story, and what do my eyes see but 2 gig memory sticks. I seem to remember being told the laptop could take up to 2 gigs when I bought it, but I just assumed what was meant was that at the time there were one gig sticks and my laptop had two slots. I've since learned that these 2 gig sticks are not always compatible with all computers. So I took a chance. I bought one 2-gig memory stick, and if it worked I would go back and buy another at a later time. So I left the old half gig in one slot and put the 2-gig in the other, and my computer seemed to boot up just fine. System said 2.5 gigs RAM, just as expected. And for a day or two, there were no problems. I was very happy. Then came the problems. I was running my video editor and my screen went black and my keyboard froze. No getting out of it without yanking the cord out. This happened a few more times, and sometimes I'd get a message that my graphics accelerator was having problems, especially when I played a video. After some troubleshooting, I realized that I still had problems using just the 2-gig stick. So I booted up with just one half gig, one of the old sticks. That was fine. Even with half my old memory, programs ran fine (albeit sluggish of course) and no graphics issues. Problem solved, right? Just put both of the old sticks back into both slots for now. Wrong. For some reason, the slot that the 2 gig stick was in now only recognizes the 2-gig stick. If I boot up with both of the original half gig sticks, it shows me with only half a gig of RAM. Someone told me I need to update or flash BIOS, and that this is the problem. Well from what I'm seeing on the web, this seems complicated and potentially catastrophic if I do it wrong. Is that really the solution? If so, can it be done safely? Thanks as always... |
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