Memory(Ram) Problem

spaceman5

hi, i have for sticks of 512mb ram installed on my pc, and in windows vista welcome centre it tells me i have 2046 ram installed, which is correct, but i have just run belerac advisor which says this:-

2046 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'A0' has 512 MB
Slot 'A1' has 512 MB
Slot 'A2' has 512 MB
Slot 'A3' is Empty

it tells me that i have 2046 mb installed, but then tells me a slot is empty, so how can i have 2gb of memory if one of my slots is empty, even on the crucial website it tells me one of my slots is empty, i dont think there is a problem as my computer is most definetly quicker than when i only had 1gb ram, and all 4 sticks of ram are exactly the same, does anybody ever come across this before, just strange it says one slot empty, but yet says 2gb of ram installed, thanks Dave.

MercilessKiller

You tried swapping some of the sticks around and doing another scan?

spaceman5

i have, still the same, as i say it is just weird, as vista says i am running 2gb, and so does belerac, just cant figure out why it says a slot is empty Dave

MercilessKiller

So when you say its still the same, you mean it says slot 4 is empty? Even when you swap 2 modules? Ye?

If so then it could be a reporting problem with that slot on the motherboard. Maybe flashing the BIOS would help with that

spaceman5

MercilessKiller wrote: »

So when you say its still the same, you mean it says slot 4 is empty? Even when you swap 2 modules? Ye?

If so then it could be a reporting problem with that slot on the motherboard. Maybe flashing the BIOS would help with that

excuse my ignorance, but what does flashing the bios mean, and how would i go about doing this, many thanks Dave.

MercilessKiller

Hmm well first of all it shouldn't really be done by most home users.

Your motherboard has its own mini operating system. Flashing it is basically upgrading it to a newer firmware version. This cna be dangerous as if it goes wrong you could be stuck with no BIOS, and without that nothing will work.....

Do you know anyone in life who's a teccy geek?

donnajunkie

is it at all possible that you have two 512mb and one 1gb?

spaceman5

MercilessKiller wrote: »

Hmm well first of all it shouldn't really be done by most home users.

Your motherboard has its own mini operating system. Flashing it is basically upgrading it to a newer firmware version. This cna be dangerous as if it goes wrong you could be stuck with no BIOS, and without that nothing will work.....

Do you know anyone in life who's a teccy geek?

erm now i know what you are on about, i have done it once, as just after i brought the pc there was a problem with drivers, turned out the bios needed updatting, so the people i brought the pc from, sent me out a disk with the update on it, and the program to flash it to the bios, and with idiot proof instructions, but i would not know where to look for updates now, many thanks, Dave

spaceman5

donnajunkie wrote: »

is it at all possible that you have two 512mb and one 1gb?

definetly all the same sticks of ram, brought them all from the same place, at the same time, as i say the system is showing that i have 2gb installed which is correct, just weird that it says that one slot is empty, when it quite obviously cannot be, thanks Dave.

MercilessKiller

When your computer boots up does it mention 4 * 512mb = 2048MB memory installed? or just the latter figure..

Maybe the BIOS has an accurate reading somewhere

donnajunkie

maybe you could try something as daft as just taking them out and putting them back in again. sometimes daft things like that work.