Forgot to take out battery when upgrading ram

Hi all,

I have an Acer 1410 that I just got and in all the excitement of upgrading the RAM I totally forgot to remove the battery when I removed the old RAM and upgraded to the new RAM. Everything seems to be working fine after the upgrade... could I have damaged anything?

 

Boot it up and test the RAM. If it test out fine, then no

 

why should remove battery?

 

you got lucky

 

The last thing you need while your oily hands are touching the inside circuits is electricity running through it.

 

what's the worst that could've happened?

the RAM detected fine

 

The worst?

I guess a plane falling out of the sky and landing on you. "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!"

Either that or you frying your motherboard.

 

most common thing that happens.
See it all the time on forums.

 

I have taken ram out of systems while they are on.
Installing ram with the battery in, will cause no damage to the memory

Memory is pretty hard to break. Usually memory only goes bad due to data memory corruption

K-TRON

 

I know. All it took to prevent it was a $5 alligator clip

 

i usually didnt step on the ground when installing something into my laptop

 

Even worse. It is best you keep your feet on the ground, so static build up in your body has a path to discharge. If you keep your feet off the ground you are like a friggin cloud.

 

There is practically no danger of changing the ram with the battery in place. The reason they say to remove it is that if the laptop powers on while you are installing the ram, if the ram is touching some pins but not all or if the wrong pin(s) are touched, it may fry the ram (likely) or kill the ram slot (unlikely). As long as it does not power on while you are pushing in the ram stick and it is not in all the way, you are fine.

To be safe with static I always touch the ground on whatever I am about to work on. A screw or the chassis would be grounded in a laptop.

 

think logical,

if the laptop is turned off and still the battery is plugged in the electricty might only or will only pass through motherboard and maybe bios because for the bios clock.electricity wont pass or even communicate with ram or sockets because when you restart your computer everything on ram will be erased.everyone knows that.dont worry my friend,no problem replacing the ram when battery is connected but always remove your battery while doing this job.you don't touch motherboard while replacing ram so no damage.

 

rams memory is always flashed when you turn off your computer and restart it and in order to flash the ram the power must be off.since ram's memory is flashed in all restarts and turning of your computer this means electricty doesnt pass through your ram or it's sockets.

 

It's the other parts of the motherboard I'm worried about. Besides, I don't feel like gambling with my laptop.

 

If you want, I will give you links to other posts on NBR that go "help, I forgot to take out the battery and killed my motherboard".

Like this for example:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=420882

 

I'm just curious, have you ever opened up your computer or done anything to it?

 

I have done tonnes of things to my notebook.
read the thread in my sig.

I know that you can "hot plug" ram, and most of the time it will be fine.
But sometimes it goes wrong.

It's more safe to take out the battery!

 

Ok, I wasn't getting on your case or anything. I read your post about motherboards frying all the time and I wondered what camp you fell into.

 

yes, maybe that post is a bit of an exaggeration.

But I do see people post on forums with that problem. I guess when you consider the number of notebooks out there, you are bound to get a few problems.

 

In a somewhat related story, a friend of mine (who unfortunately was a bit short on computer knowledge) bought a notebook SODIMM and tried to put it in his desktop motherboard, which ended up frying the motherboard when he tried to turn it on. I don't know if the SODIMM was damaged or not, as he returned it before we got around to testing it out.

 

lol that was lame and dumb... but comming back to the topic. When i bought my laptop, the sales guy gave me a free ram upgrade on the spot. He had the battery in there was no shoting or anything and my laptop still works fine. BTW my battery had 50% charge then... so i don't think you should have any problem with changing the ram with the battery in... might be way more dangerous when your'e having connected to AC power.

 

My point was more to back up Trottel's post about there possibly being a problem if the power comes on while you're installing the RAM. But otherwise, yes, there should be no problem leaving the battery in as long as you don't somehow inadvertently turn it on or allow power to flow by shorting something by accident. Basically, taking out the battery is just an added safety feature, like using a UPS/surge protector. Normally it shouldn't make a difference, but just in case...