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    Dell e1505 dual-channel fail

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by Lt. Cobalt, Dec 19, 2009.

  1. Lt. Cobalt

    Lt. Cobalt Newbie

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    Hello all,
    So my girlfriend has a dell e1505 that is ~3 years old (she was given it for Christmas in 06), and overall it is still functioning very well. She has been wanting to make the windows 7 switch, however she only has 512MB ram in it, so she ordered a 2x1GB ddr2 667 Crucial kit off Newegg for me to install. After it arrived I popped open her memory compartment and lo and behold there were two 512 sticks already in there. I was puzzled by this, so I installed the new ram and went into the BIOS, which reported that dual channel mode was running and there was only 1024MB of memory. I naturally thought one of the memory slots was dead so I tried each stick in one slot at a time, each time it booted up with the exact same info, 1024MB of ram. From this I can only conclude that it simply refuses to actually run dual channel, despite both slots being perfectly functional. I have flashed the BIOS, to no avail, and now have no idea what to do. If anyone could give me some advice on this matter I would be very grateful. Thanks :D .
     
    Lt. Cobalt, Dec 19, 2009
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  2. OneCool

    OneCool I AM NUMBER 67

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    That is crazy.

    Try this put one stick of the of the new in one slot and one stick of the old in the other and see if it will boot.

    It should see two different size ram modules and turn dual channel off.
     
    OneCool, Dec 19, 2009
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  3. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    In the BIOS I believe there is an option to specify to run the memory in dual channel or asynchronous mode.
    Your problem does not have to do with BIOS limitation, as I have 4gb PC5300 in my E1505.

    When I installed new memory in my laptop, the system took a good 2 minutes or so of black screen before posting to the BIOS. Does that happen for you.

    Good luck,

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Dec 22, 2009
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  4. raduque

    raduque Notebook Evangelist

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    Whether or not dual-channel is working isn't the issue here.

    The bigger issue is that the system is only reading half the installed ram. It originally had 2x512mb sticks but was only showing 512mb, not 1gb. When two 1gb sticks were installed, the system only showed 1024mb, not 2048.

    There's something else wrong with the machine.
     
    raduque, Dec 23, 2009
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