Inspiron 5100 not recognizing memory

Question

I'm having a problem with my 5100 not recognizing half of the ram on the system. Sometimes it will recognize all 256MB, more often only 128. Needless to say, this stinks. Has anyone else been having this problem, and been able to fix it?

I'm running the latest BIOS, and all the newest drivers, did a full hard drive reformat a few weeks ago, but this problem has been going on since long before that. I opened the memory cover and as far as I can tell the chips are installed correctly.

Thanks for any help.

1d49f54a95134b2 · Answer

Have you tried reseating the memory? Or it could be the memory is broken.

ejn63 · Answer

The other possibility is that the memory socket on the system board is failing, which isn't uncommon with this model.

dallascowboyswo · Answer

If you can determine which slot is bad you can buy a 512 mb stick for the other and use it. You can also test it with known good memory or run dell diags on them.

Inspiron 5100
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHZ
512 MB RAM
32 MB MOBILITY RADEON 7500C
40 GB Fujitsu HD
QSI CDRW/DVD SBW-242
Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated NIC
Dell Wireless 1350 WLAN Mini-PCI card
BCM V.92 56k Modem
SigmaTel C-Major Audio
Bios ver. A31
Win XP Home SP2
pur. Jan 2004
WRT54GS Linksys router
ZoneAlarm Pro ver 5.1.011.000
Norton SystemWorks Premier ver 9

aamerrill01 · Answer

I resat the memory and it started up fine, recognizing the full 256 mg. I ran diagnostics on it, three and it was fine. how to do i tell if it is for sure the socket? And what can I do about that?

again, thanks for the help.

ONTHEFLY86 · Answer

I found that 5100 memory slot B was failing in my machine because it was not making good contact. The locking tabs are not keeping the memory chip far enough down.   PS. Mark sure you have the correct memory for yor machine

Pablo Black · Answer

I had the same problem. I 'fixed' it for a while by putting little round rubber circles (the kind used as pads underneath electronic equipment) on the memory chip so it would be forced down when I closed the memory compartment. Worked for a while, but eventually nothing would work with that slot. From the posts here, it's clear that Inspiron 5100s are prone to this. I'm going to look further into sticking a 1 GB memory stick into the remaining good slot.

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Inspiron 5100 not recognizing memory

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