Z33a Hardware Problem

I have a Z33a experiencing some hardware troubles that I can't seem to figure out. The basic problem is this: my laptop randomly (?) won't boot unless I remove and re-seat the RAM.

Here's the full story/breakdown...

Windows XP bluescreened a week ago. Nothing unusual happening, just regular web browsing. When I attempted to reboot, the cooling fan spun up to max speed and the laptop powered off within the first five seconds. This happened each time I rebooted. So, I tested all hardware connections - reseated RAM and Hard Drive. Voila, it booted! I popped up Mobile Meter and all temperatures were perfectly fine, so it wasn't overheating.

Soon after, XP bluescreened again and again the system fan would spin up to max and prevent booting up. Reseated the Hard Drive to see if that might be the culprit. Nope. Reseating the RAM got me back in business. I thought there might be a virus, so I flashed the CMOS and did a full virus scan. Nothing came up. Ran a scan disk on the hard drive to correct any errors (none found) and defragged. Powered down for the night.

In the morning, wouldn't boot again - same thing with the fan. Spent the day doing hardware tests. Memtest ran fine, processor tests ran fine, hard drive tests ran fine. Everything looked good. Also of note, I ran these tests from a Boot Disk, never loading Windows, and I could repeatedly reboot all day long.

The moment I went into Windows and backed out, though, it went back to crap. So, I figured it must be something with Windows. Tried doing a Windows Repair from the XP CD and that didn't fix it, next I formatted the hard drive from my boot disk and rebooted just to verify that it would reboot fine. It did. As I had work to do, I left it alone for a few hours.

Upon my return, nothing having been done to the laptop and no visits to Windows, it won't boot again. I can pull out the RAM and reseat it every time and the laptop will boot up, but that's not exactly an ideal situation. I'm sure there's something significant in the fact that the RAM is involved, I just don't know what.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

Did the Z33 use 1 or 2 RAM sticks? I can't remember.

Have you tried a different RAM stick to see if it's an issue with an individual stick (even though they passed MemTest)? That would further isolate it to the stick vs motherboard connection from the slot. RAM is much more likely to go bad than have a motherboard issue (statistically, of course) - if the latter, may not be much else to do....

 

I don't have another MicroSODIMM to test out - heck, they're not that easy to find online at all. The Z33a has 256MB built in and accepts a single MicroSODIMM up to 512MB. Just can't figure out what relationship the RAM would have to the behavior the laptop is exhibiting on reboot.

Thanks for the reply!