The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    m17x ram problems

    Discussion in 'Alienware' started by pfctmitsubishi, Dec 26, 2008.

  1. pfctmitsubishi

    pfctmitsubishi Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    14
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    okay guys back in the day when i ordered my m17x i had installed only 2gb of ram.. and about a month ago i decided i would upgrade to 4gb

    well I got my 4gb installed.. everything running just fine untill i recieved the BSOD something about memory.. so now reading about it people say that is a ram problem

    one thing tho i did notice Belarc Advisor showed Dimm0 2046 and Dimm1 with 2046 but above that it only showed 2046 ram installed not 4gb like it should have

    so now i tried testing my ram by removing all and trying one stick at a time... and it doesnt have any problems running single channel and both sticks seem to work just fine.. then i tried one 2gb and one 1gb and it belarc advisor then shows dimm0 1gb and dimm1 2gb but total it shows only 2gb.. i dont understand what is going on.

    its like the two 1gb sticks in dual channel work and all the sticks work in single channel alone and any match like 1gb and 2gb or 2gb and 2gb dont work..

    hope i didnt loose you guys but im confused too.
     
    pfctmitsubishi, Dec 26, 2008
    #1
  2. TurbodTalon

    TurbodTalon Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    1,392
    Messages:
    3,147
    Likes Received:
    158
    Trophy Points:
    131
    To truly eliminate a bad RAM module, run a program called Memtest. It runs in DOS environment and tests your RAM for errors.

    Do the specs on your new RAM match your old? Are you running mismatched RAM modules; i.e., different brand, different latency, different frequency?

    I would test each module, individually, in the SAME slot.
    Then re-accomplish the same test in the other slot.

    Don't know if you've got a 32 or 64 bit OS, but remember the 32 bit OS won't show anything beyond ~3.25GB of RAM.

    Let us know what you find, and good luck.
     
    TurbodTalon, Dec 27, 2008
    #2