HOW TO: Install RAM on your DELL notebook

i think its a great pictorial but why take the keyboard out? just setting it up a little allows access and you dont risk breaking that connection.

 

newer models no longer have this weird arrangement, they have dual connectors that hold one card on top of the other, and its much easier to upgrade your RAM, excellent guide though!

 

Great summary -- lots of pages of comments too, which must mean its popular.

I just wanted to add a solution for a problem that I had. After putting in the new ram (8GB) and booting, I found that the Dell warmup progress bar got stuck near the start. It didn't move after 5 minutes of waiting.

The problem turned out to be an old version of the BIOS. I was running revision A12. As described here, revision A13 of the BIOS is required.

I looked on the Dell site and found that A14 was available so I grabbed that one instead. After installing A14 my laptop started normally and was able to use the full 8Gb.

One other point -- I'm running linux and the update utility is DOS only. I used the instructions here, to make a bootable DOS cdrom with the bios update.

Worked for me. Thanks again for the detailed directions.

 

This would be me being nit picky. I wouldn't recommend putting your laptop (and opening it) on top of a towel. why?
Static electricity.
I know a guy that took his motherboard (yes it was a desktop) and laid it down on a pool table (felt material) and fried the whole thing.

 

I am sure you are surprised to get a response this late but is there anywhere I can see your post with pictures?

 

second time i visited and rechecked the instructions for installing/reaching RAM. Amazed how through the instructions are. Large detailed pictures are awesome. Well Done!

 

Anyone know of a decent guide for replacing the hard-drive in a Dell Latitude D630?

 

I have Dell Inspiron 6400 (E1505) with 1 gig of RAM. I want to upgrade it to 2 gig now. Present RAm (2*512mb) has PC2 4200 type, and crucial.com scan suggests to go for (2*1 gb) with PC2 5300. I want to make sure this will not cause any problem to my laptop. Also what is the location of 2 RAM's.. both on same side, or on opposite side? Pls suggest quickly.
Thanks,
Mahesh

 

Hi Guys, I just installed 2GB of Crucial Ram on my Dell E1505 however, it is only reading as 1GB.

I went into the Bios and got the following message: "Due to an amount of memory being assigned for your system, memory available is less then then memory installed".

Anybody know how to get it to read the 2GB I installed? TIA.

 

Both Ram chips are installed in the panel on the bottom of that laptop. If Crucial suggests PC2 5300 I say go with it. I am running Crucial on my e1505.

 

Perhaps try to reseat the Ram then reboot.

 

Fantastic guide. Don't like how the trolls are complaining that a 42-step guide is 'too complex'. It gives me a lot of comfort to have such a detailed guide with hi-res pics of every single step, ready for when I give this a go...

BTW my D420 currently has 1.5GB RAM, I'm running Win7 on it (heh!) and it's quite slow and spins the hdd a lot. Going from 1GB to 1.5GB took it from unusable to just slow. Can anyone report if an upgrade to 2GB will take me from slow to okay? Or is the hdd the bottleneck?

 

Good news.. today I was able to upgarde my Dell to 2 GB successfully.
It was quite easy !!
This video was very useful as well..

 

im bringing this back from the dead! this thread is what inspired me to join the site! WOW! i had found the stick of ram on the back and wondered why there was only one slot... then after a yahoo search, i found this! thanks SSOOOO much for this thread! super easy! the tutorial and pics made this idiot proof! how do i know? i just removed the keyboard (investigative purposes) and put it back in... and it still works! i found my D630 has 2 sticks of 512, so im expecting BIG improvements when i max out both slots! i know this computer may be a little outdated by now (this thread started in 07), but it suit my purposes perfectly, rugged and parts are abundant!

thanks again sirius_GTO!

 

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but please don't bring back threads from the dead. Thank you and closed.