Tecra a7 ram problem

Hey guys.

Today i decided it was time to upgrade my toshiba tecra a7 t2300 from 1 gig of ram to 2 gigs. I know the laptop is getting old, however i'm trying my best to get at least another couple of months out of my lappy, and considering ram is so cheap, i thought i'd give it a go.

Problem:

If i insert both new 1gig sticks of ram (amicroe 1gb ddr2 667mhz pc5300 sodimm) into the computer, it will load to the windows screen then BSOD. Generally with win32k.sys error. I have read a couple of sites saying to sync the ram or adjust vcore/vdimm settings, however i have no idea how to do this or even if it would work, so i thought i'd ask you guys for help.

-Ben

 

In AMD systems you could ran the memory sync. or async. In other words at the same speed as the processor or at different speed compared to the processor.

I'm not aware that such an option exist intel based laptops, but if it does it should be inside the BIOS.

The Tecra A7 is a very good machine. I don't own one but had a chance to play with one a while ago.

To my knowledge you don't have a sycronisation problem, because if you did your laptop won't boot in the first place.

Try to swap the ram module (i.e. put the ram that was in slot 1 in slot 2 and vis versa), and see what happen.

Try also to upgrade the bios to the latest version. I presume that before the upgrade you had 2 x 512, right? if yes, try also a combination of 512MB + 1GB and see what will happen. You could also try to back up your work and re-install windows.

Are both ram module similar? and where did you buy them from?

If none of the above suggestions work for you, that would mean that the Ram you have in not of a good quality or just incompatible with your laptop.

Last, a useful info is you can upgrade the CPU in your laptop to a T7200, T7400 or T7600 which will provide a huge boost compared to your T2300

 

Thank you for the great response!

Unfortunately upgrading the laptop any further than just ram is almost out of the question, due to a couple of other small problems starting to occur. (CD drive is starting to fault and scratch disks, the keyboard is no longer functioning and the hard drive randomly doesn't like turning on. (you can see i have abused this poor laptop)

The laptop ram i purchased is 1gb amicroe ddr2 667mhz. Both sticks are identical, from Harvey Norman.

I took your advice and swapped the ram around and still there was blue screening, or an inability to start the laptop at all.

I replaced one of the 1gb ram sticks with one of my older, but still working, 512 sticks and it seemed to work fine (even though the 512 stick was a different fsb). The system read the ram and it was all accounted for 1.512gb. I swapped the 1gb sticks over and again the system was fine, however with both 1g at the same time... no luck.

I think it maybe time to give up on this poor machine and look at buying myself a dedicated PC for my gaming. Using a laptop for gaming has it's advantages, but i think I'll stick to word processing laptops in the future.

To you or anyone else on this forum, can you link me a good website, another thread here where i can read up on building my own PC. (estimate about 1500aud.

Thanks again
-ben

 

You did abuse it for sure The tecra is a business laptop and thus has a better quality materials and built quality.

Tell me, usually business laptops have three years warranty, so can't you get toshiba to replace the harddrive, keyboard and optical drive?

I have the same opinion. For gaming it's either a PC or a consol. Beside PCs can eeasily and cheaply be upgraded.

The slowest ram will for the fastest one to downclock.

your laptop supports definitly a max of 4GB
http://cnet.nytimes.com/notebooks/toshiba-tecra-a7-s712/4014-3121_9-31757638.html?info=user&#p5


I've made a little mistake. The laptop I used is the Tecra A5 not the A7.

try a bios upgrade:

If this doesn't work it means that your ram is not %100 compatible with your laptop. You could return it and ask for better one or a refund.