Dell Inspiron Boots slow sometimes and reports Less System RAM

Question

Hi,   I have an Inspiron 8600 laptop.  Just recently I started geting an intermittent problem: When I boot there is a progress bar for the bios loading, or whatever the bios is doing. Sometimes this bar moves slow.  And some times when it moves it also reports the amount of system ram has changed.  In this case only one of the two 1-gig dimm's is showing.  So I go from 2 to 1 gig of ram.  The same 2 gig's of ram have been in the system for 2+ years. I did run memory diags and they are fine. When I get the loss of memory, if I reboot once or twice it's boot with all ram and system works fine.  I suspect I have a dimm that is about to fail or a bios that has problems.  I was thininkg about buying new ram to see if problem goes away, but this  could be a waste of money. Any suggestions on additional diagnostics?

cybrett · Answer

You can try testing with one stick of ram at a time.  If the RAM stick that has the problem fails, you'll just get beep codes, and you'll know that that RAM is no good.

laptopdev · Answer

ok, that's a goo idea, I wiil try this when I have time to reboot later and report back!

Locked Topics – Laptops General

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