Ram chips wont work at same time

4743hudsonj

ok so my brother wanted to upgrade to w7 from xp, he needed more ram, i bought him a 1gb chip from ebuyer (crucical memory) so he would have a total of 1.5GB

i used the crucical scanner to make sure,

this is what their site said id need

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=09111428A5CA7304

this is what i bought

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119282

same thing unless ive made a silly mistake that i cant see.
pretty sure ive not though

anyways i installed the ram whilst his laptop was still on xp, i booted and windows only recognised the original 512mb, so i ran cpu-z and it recognised both, but the laptop did seem rather sluggish (he had another 256mb chip in prior so difference was noticable) so i beleived windows. i reseated both the ram modules and without checking again i installed windows 7.

then when looking at the computer info its only recognising 1gb of ram and despite reseating both ram modules and even swapping them around this will not change

the MB defiantly supports up to 2gb so its not that.
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.aspx?model=Satellite%20Pro%20M50%20Series

im stuck, unless maybe the first chip has now died, maybe putting in the smaller chip again will determine this.

any other ideas in the mean time?

aliEnRIK

Some motherboards will only accept memory of the same type (as in EXACT same type)

Rescan with crucial and see what it says (usually tells you what the motherboards limited to)

4743hudsonj

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Some motherboards will only accept memory of the same type (as in EXACT same type)

Rescan with crucial and see what it says (usually tells you what the motherboards limited to)

do you mean down to manufacturer of the ram?

otherwise the crucical scan shows up what i posted in my third link (it isnt the scan, rather the manual search but checked and its the same result.

ill run cpuz and check what mhz the original ram runs at as this new chip is 667mhz.

aliEnRIK

I mean EXACT same RAM (Manufacturer AND type)

4743hudsonj

aliEnRIK wrote: »

I mean EXACT same RAM (Manufacturer AND type)

well heres a list of 3 ram modules and as many details as i can find

1(original 512mb): Samsung 512mb DDR2 200pin SODIMM pc2-4200s CL(doesnt say)

2(256mb thats worked for years): Transcend 256mb DDR2 200pin SODIMM pc2-4200 533mhz cl-4

3(new): Crucical 1GB 200pin SODIMM DDR2 pc2-5300 cl-5 667mhz


so we can see that the new one is different, probably why it doesnt work together with the other chip then?

anything i can do to change this?

fwor

It would be interesting to see if you boot the laptop from a Memtest 86 CD whether it detects the extra RAM and it tests out Ok.

One other thing that sometimes helps (if the BIOS has the feature) is to go into the BIOS and increase the CAS latency by one (i.e. to a higher CL value) to see if slightly less critical timing helps. I had this on a Shuttle where the timings detected by SPD would not work, which manual tweaking fixed.

4743hudsonj

fwor wrote: »

It would be interesting to see if you boot the laptop from a Memtest 86 CD whether it detects the extra RAM and it tests out Ok.

One other thing that sometimes helps (if the BIOS has the feature) is to go into the BIOS and increase the CAS latency by one (i.e. to a higher CL value) to see if slightly less critical timing helps. I had this on a Shuttle where the timings detected by SPD would not work, which manual tweaking fixed.

ill try that out, thanks

EDIT: not tried it but im just wondering what altering the CAS latency would actually do if the higher cl-5 chip is working anyways, just not at the same time with the cl-4 chip. unless only half of the chip is actually working, if thats possible?.