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1172
September 8th, 2018 17:00
Inspiron m5030 memory upgrade issue
I am trying to upgrade the memory on my m5030 from 3 GB to 6 GB. It came with 2 chips - 1GB and 2GB. I replaced the 1 GB chip with a 4GB chip that I bought directly from Dell. They told me this would work. When I boot the PC, it shows 6GB detected but only 1.75 GB usable. It shows 4GB hardware reserved. I went into msconfig and made sure maximum memory is unchecked. I am running on 64bit OS (windows 7 home premium.) Everything I read seems to say I have to go into the BIOS for memory remapping. However, I cannot find that feature in my BIOS anywhere. Anyone run into this issue before? I am thinking Dell may be wrong on the memory upgrade and I just need to return it. Suggestions?
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help123a
73 Posts
0
September 8th, 2018 19:00
Try the 4gig stick in the other Dim slot...maybe it has to be in Dim1...older sticks in Dim2.
Still fails, try just the 4gig and see what it does. If works, try it with the 1gb stick.
Either old ram stick was bad....or they have incompatible latency specs...??
eddiesoft
3 Posts
0
September 10th, 2018 11:00
I tried swapping the chips and no difference. I did try only putting the 4GB chip in and the PC would not boot. It just gave off a high pitched whine. That is why I contacted Dell as I was concerned the memory chip they sent me was bad. The support person I chatted with said the memory was fine because it was detecting 6GB with both installed (they did not give me an explanation for the lack of boot with only 4GB chip.) They told me I had a configuration problem if it said 4GB was reserved for hardware. They wanted to charge me to troubleshoot the problem and fix my configuration since the PC is well out of warranty. I can do that but I am concerned the memory is bad and did not want to waste money and time chasing down a problem that was due to a bad chip. I would have thought it would work with the 4GB chip by itself.
help123a
73 Posts
0
September 10th, 2018 12:00
Yes, it should have.
What they will charge you for service will likely exceed what the laptop is worth.
Return the Ram to DELL as bad for a refund.
DDR3 is picky. If you tried putting a newer single sided high density DDR3 ram stick in a old machine, it wont work. Look for a memory density and speed that matches your old sticks. Go to a computer repair place and ask for old DDR3 at 1600mhz or less.
Don’t buy a new DDR3 memory stick. It wont work.
eddiesoft
3 Posts
0
September 11th, 2018 15:00
Thank you for the information. This DIMM says it is 1600mhz but I wonder if it is faulty. I am sending it back to Dell and will see if I can find some older chips local. Thank you for your help!!