Aspire 9300 vs 4G of memory

I have an Acer Aspire 9300-3089. The specifications say that it will support 4G of memory (2 x 2G DDR2 SODIMMs).

When I install two A-Data DDR2 800 SODIMMs, the machine will not post. When I power it on, it sits there with just a single blinking underscore on the screen. This is before the BIOS splash or setup screens. So this is not an OS issue.

Each of the 2G SODIMMs works alone, in either slot, or in combination with the 512M SODIMM that Acer supplied. I've tested them with hours of Memtest86+.

Has anyone else got any relevant experience? A 9300 with 4G of RAM? Solutions to 4G RAM mysteries or pairs-of-SODIMM mysteries?

Could this problem be related to dual-channel mode? The only configuration that I tested that could run in dual-channel mode would be the one that fails.

Could this problem be that the 9300 does not actually support 4G of RAM?

I've talked to Acer. They gave a bunch of excuses, none of which are convincing;

• "we only support 512M because that is what we shipped" -- then what the heck does the spec mean?
• "we only support memory that we supply" -- can you supply 2G sticks? "no"
• "Probably the SODIMMs are bad" -- what is the evidence (they do work)?
• "maybe other brands work" Do you have any that you recommend? "Not officially" -- so what do JEDEC standards mean?

I've talked to the store that sold me the computer (Staples). They don't have any 2G sticks to test with. They don't have another 9300 to test and compare.

I've talked with the store that sold me the SODIMMs. They don't have any open 2G sticks to test with at this time but maybe in a week.

I've just sent an email to A-Data.

 

Will you be trying to run Windows XP or Vista under 4 GB of memory? If you are running XP you are SOL due to 32bit architecture.

As far as posting with 4GB of memory in a laptop I have not been able to get my 5672 to also run with 4 GB of memory (2 works just fine though).

The issue lies in the ability of the board to see duel sided memory in both banks @ that capacity a believe. This is a bios / hardware issue and not a bad memory issue (because clearly both work independently).

As far as Acer saying "we only support what came with the PC" it's like if you went and bought a car off the dealership floor and ripped out the back seat of a 2 door coup and tried to install a better seat or something. Don't expect the manufacturer to say "sure no problem lets support that".

This is why the "default" configuration has become their montra. As far as getting 4 GB to post good luck =( I commend you for taking on the challenge! As far as saying 4 GB of memory on that system it may be that the chipset supports 4gb but the board itself will not. That is the case with my 5672 with a Core 2 duo. The ICH chipset can support it, but the board is not designed to carry the weight.

--ssx--

 

The 9300 came with Windows Vista Basic so I will be using that to some extent.

I have also installed Fedora 8 Linux for x86_64. That should have no 4G issues, assuming that I can get the machine past its current 4G issue.

(I did try 32-bit Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10. Neither worked. I'm strongly suspect that the Acer BIOS does not set up the hardware properly. That is another topic. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/AcerAspire9300-3089)

How did you decide that the problem was due to inability to support dual-sided memory? Are you saying that dual-sided + single-sided works, but dual-sided + dual-sided does not?

How can you tell if memory is dual-sided? My recollection is that this isn't really about chips on both sides of the module.

No, it is more like changing the tires. There are meant to be field-replaceable units. Furthermore, the published Acer specifications strongly imply that memory can be upgraded.

The specifications I refer to are for the computer, not the motherboard or chipset.

My notebook uses an nVidia chipset and an AMD Turion 64 MK-38 microprocessor. (All other things being equal, I would prefer a Core 2 Duo, but they are not equal.)

Thanks for your help.

 

A little more information. I tried two 2G Corsair "Value Select" DDR2 667MHz SO-DIMMs.

Again, one at a time worked. A pair did not.

This indicates problems with these theories:

1. my DDR2 800 was too fast (DDR2 667 is not too fast but it doesn't work)
2. my particular SO-DIMMs were broken (unlikely that another pair were similarly broken)
3. A-Data SO-DIMMs are incompatible (the Corsairs and A-Data vote 2 against 1 that it is the Acer that is incompatible)

Unfortunately I didn't think to try one stick of DDR2 800 with one stick of DDR2 667. That might have been interesting (probably not).

 

Phone acer guy they most like check spec on spefic model and tell you it won,nt take 4 gig

for istance i had 9410 no z will take 4 gig 9410z with out witll not just tell them how you try they will check they specs

 

The initial BIOS version that comes with this machine has an issue with 4gigs of ram. Update the BIOS and all should be fine. If there is still a problem then maybe there is an issue with the ram you are trying to fit.

Also, Acer will only give you warranty support on parts that came with the unit or parts that they have fitted at a later date.

 

It is the software not the hardware. Although the Acer Aspire 9300 motherboard will recognize 4 gigs of memory, because XP and Vista are both 32 bit systems the OS will not recognize anything more than 3.25 gigs of a 4 gig ram install. For the OS to recognize 4 complete gigs or you have to make the move to a 64 bit system. I just bought a 2 gig stick of generic ram and installed it. I'm posting this comment with the ram freshly installed on my Vista OS Acer Aspire 9300. I had to do all the research without the aid of Acer support for what might be obvious reasons. Have not yet tried Ubuntu 7.10 yet but hope to in the future. Hope this helps.

 

Well, they will tell me a bunch of things to close the ticket

The manual shipped with the notebook says that it takes 4G. The only specs on the web say it will take 4G. Phone support could find no specs that said anything other than 4G.

 

There is no BIOS update for Vista machines.

I did manage to flash the updated BIOS available for XP. That's what I tested.

That's their position but it makes the specs nonsense since they will not supply 2G SODIMMs, even as a separate part (according to the phone support).

Their obligation is to ensure that the notebook performs as specified. That includes supporting industry standard RAM.

 

The latest BIOS revision is 1.20 and that will see you fine, even v1.14 will do

Also the people on the phone support have it wrong, Acer have many machines that have 2 gig sticks straight from the factory so the service centers can fit the ram to the unit (but it wont be worth the extortionate cost); i dont believe they are searching for the parts that you require correctly.

 

You are right that many (but not all) 32-bit versions of MS Windows do not support a full 4G.

It turns out that my problem is not OS-related. It shows up before the OS is booted. With 4G installed, my machine's BIOS splash screen and POSTing do not show up. See the second paragraph of my first message.

For what it is worth, I do run a 64-bit OS (Linux), but I expect no support on that from Acer. Too bad -- Acer has shipped some notebooks with Linux.

I suspect/hope that the problem is software -- more precisely, firmware. It is possible that a BIOS update could fix the problem. But I don't think that the support folks are passing on my message to the engineers.

I tried writing the BIOS engineer. I found his email address in the release notes for the latest BIOS. Unfortunately I have had no response. The address might be wrong, he might be treating my message as SPAM, he might be on other projects, he might not speak English, he might not care, ...

 

My machine shipped with BIOS v1.17. I flashed v1.20 provided for WindowsXP. I cannot see why, but perhaps there is a problem stemming from the fact that the BIOS was only provided for WinXP, but my notebook shipped with WinVista.

As I said, the phone support folks are grasping at any reason to close the ticket. Since I'm a long way from Texas (in Canada), I'm at their mercy. I don't know what to do next. Current theory: put the second 2G stick in another notebook. This bugs me.

 

Similar experience to other posters here.

Aspire 9300 AMD Turion TL50 BIOS 1.20

Shipped with 2 x 512MB

Upgrade (as per the user guide) to 2x2GB sticks and the machine will not POST.

All combinations of single stick in any given slot works. even mixing 1x2gb and1x512Mb worked... but just not 2x2GB.


A telephone call to ACER support here in the UK was fruitless as the tech support individual was completely devoid of clue (and Courtesy, Knowledge, Empathy, Listening Skills etc.)

My Guess? A BIOS problem.

Short term fix? Just running with 1x2gb stick. the other 'spare' gone into my wifes DELL.

 

The very latest BIOS is based on an older version for some strange reason. Update the BIOS in DOS if you can and use v1.19... that'll fix your problem.

 

Thanks for your extensive report. Too bad your experience matches mine so closely.

The Acer is my wife's and the extra stick is in now in my daughter's Dell.

Fascinating. How do you know this?

If Acer reverted to an older code base, it suggests that 1.19 had problems that they thought were worse than the older version's. Do you know what problems come with 1.19?

Bellebouche: can you test this? I cannot because the Dell is in another city.

On another note:

I think that Vista can support more than 3G of RAM once SP1 is installed. Vista Home Premium + SP1 on my desktop seems to recognize the 6G of RAM. I don't really care since I bought it to run Linux, but HP forced me to buy Vista.

Interestingly, a friend with the same desktop (HP Pavilion a6245n) tried 8G, as per specifications but it locked up. Is there a pattern here? Oh: more to the pattern: his significant other's machine got the RAM that wouldn't work in his machine.

"Everybody" says Vista is useless without at least 2G of RAM. It would not support more than 3G. That is a very narrow range. Furthermore, this amount of memory is quite inexpensive. It makes perfect sense that Microsoft has to fix this upper bound.

I had hoped that the fix might be to make 64-bit Vista pervasive. Perhaps with a single license covering both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista. I admit that that solution would leave many Intel-based computers high and dry, so it ought not to be the only solution. I've been using x86-64 Linux for almost four years.

 

It's worth a go of course although I am marginally reluctant revert the BIOS back to an earlier revision.

Not easy for me to test as my other stick and the other laptop are home in France, I'm working away in the UK. I will give it a whirl at the weekend.

Once past this point - if I get it to POST ok with the 4GB installed the next trick will be getting XP to recognise as much of the system RAM as possible.

I've downloaded the 1.19 BIOS image and the release notes within indicate that this bug was fixed in the 1.11 release.

8. Fixed : system can't boot to os when insert 4g memory​

If it's now broken again in 1.20 it's a shame as many people will undoubtedly do what I did... go for the latest version.

I'll report back with results as soon as I have something conclusive.

 

Nod.

Memory in another country is worse than memory in another city.

I'm not sure that I will be able to steal the memory back from my daughter anyway.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx says that XP supports at most 4G of RAM.

To use that last bit of memory, I think PAE needs to be enabled. Otherwise a certain amount of the 4G address space must be reserved for I/O devices and therefore cannot be used for RAM. I don't know the size of this reservation.

According to this, PAE is not enabled by default in XP, but it can be turned on:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366796(VS.85).aspx

Note: I've just made this up and have not tested it.

Very very interesting. I wish I'd known this and had been able to tell the Acer support person.

Thanks!

 

Close, but No Cigar!

BIOS downgrade to 1.19. So far, so good.

Machine completes POST successfully and the system reports 4096 MB system RAM

OS Boots.. and then within 3/4 minutes. System freezes solid.

Pull one of the sticks out and the machine runs good as new.

So.. the 1.19 BIOS moved things on a little.

Could be that my RAM isn't completely compatible despite what the retailer claims. (It's marked up as DDR2, PC2-5300s-555-12-ZZ)

Strangely, take one stick out and it runs fine (as single channel)

Whatever, the BIOS issue with 1.20 not passing a POST is very real problem and I sit and wait for ACER to release a 1.2X that's bug free.

 

Thanks for testing this.

That is quite an odd symptom for a released BIOS. I think it strongly suggests a BIOS bug rather than a hardware problem.

What happens if you boot to Memtest86 or Memtest86+ (I don't know which is better at the moment -- both are good)? Whenever I get a new machine or new RAM, I run Memetest86+ for a day or so.

Since memtest86+t does not run under an OS (or it supplies its own), it eliminates a number of irrelevant points of failure.

Most BIOSes (I cannot check with the ACER one at the moment) have an option called something like "quick boot". What it does is cut down the memory test done at each boot. You might want to change this setting just to try the BIOS's memory checking.

There should not be any incompatible RAM. JEDEC sets industry standards to prevent this situation. Even so, it does come up sometimes. More often there is a specification that the manufacturer didn't tell you (for example, a limit on the number of "sides"). Still, that usually shows up immediately, not two minutes in.

My guess is that that could be a long wait. After all, I reported the problem 4 months ago and they ignored me. And there has been no new BIOS in that timeframe. I suspect that the machine is out of production and they are not going to issue a new BIOS unless something important (in their judgement) comes up.

Reporting this to ACER is the only way I can imagine influencing them. Maybe they won't ignore you. You do have more data than I had.

Do your (French? EU?) consumer protection laws have good enforcement? Can you compel ACER to make their product conform to the specifications they provided before they sold it to you? I don't think our (Canadian) enforcers would care.

To be honest, at this point, the problem annoys me more than it causes a problem. 2.5G is good enough for my purposes and I have found a good home for the left-over 2G stick.

 

There may be a hardware issue here, the 1.20 BIOS is only to fix "phenom errata".... no use on this unit as it doesn't run phenom CPUs.

I'm running 4 GB with 1.19 at the moment and dont have any issues at all.

The 1.19 BIOS proved that the 1.20 BIOS was no good but your continuing issues suggest a hardware fault too... i've yet to see a difference between to 2 memtest versions but i prefer memtest+ as i have it set up to run from a disk.

I'd like to hear your progress on this matter.

 

memtest86+ is available from http://www.memtest.org/
It is GPLed and free.
The easiest way to get it is to download the .iso file and burn it to a CD (floppies are easier, but extinct). Then boot that CD.

This page describes how to burn a CD from a .iso under several OSes:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

 

could someone pleaseplease help me find the Acer Aspire 9300 Bios v.1.19 download link?
thanks in advance

 

http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_9300.html

You will see the bios updates on this page.

 

I Officially LOVE YOU!!!!
thanks much

 

Steady now lol!!!