nx9420 locks up after RAM upgrade

hello all - just bought a Kingston 1GB PC-5400 (667Mhz) SODIMM, and put it into the expansion slot on the bottom of the laptop. Fitted in fine, and the laptop started fine, and the BIOS popped up to say it had detected the system as having 2048Mb RAM now - sweet! Confirmed the change, system restarted and booted to Windows fine. Control Panel showed the 2Gb of RAM, and the system felt more reponsive. But - started playing World of Warcraft and after about 2 or 3 minutes the computer completely froze, totally locked. CTRL-ALT-DEL did nothing, ALT-TAB nothing etc. Rebooted, windows starts ok, tried Civ 4, same thing after a few minutes.

Downloaded and ran Memtest86, let it run all night and the RAM passed all tests, so I think don't think the new memory is faulty - I'm thinking there might be some sort of compatibility problem between the two. The only difference I can see between the HP specs for the ram in the machine is that it is listed as PC-5300 (667Mhz), which seems to be a purely cosmetic difference. When I remove the new memory, the system runs fine, and was able to play both games for over an hour without any problems, crashes or lockups.

I'm thinking tonight I might remove the HP memory from the under keyboard slot and try the new Kingston RAM in there and see if it still crashes, if so then I'll return it to the shop, but if it works then I'll try the HP ram in the expansion slot...if that causes the crashes to come back then I'm thinking there's a compatability issue between the two memory chips (and I'll just get another Kingston chip and run with that).

Does anyone have any other suggestions that might help? The laptop isn't overclocked or anything, just a stock nx9420.

Cheers!

 

then it must be the ram. return it, or exchange

 

I would also try running the notebook with only the new memory, because IMHO the both memory sticks aren't 100% compatible (latencies and memory tweaks), and if you have both sticks inserted they are running in dual channel mode, and with different sticks you're always looking for trouble.

Always use the same sticks for dual channel!

I replaced my original HP 512 MB of memory with a 1GB A-Data, and a month later I bought another 1GB A-Data stick, and is running flawlessly

 

The Ram is no good

 

Its likely that theres a compatibility issue with the memory. Try and return the memory, or exachnage it with memory from some other manufacturer. It if it a memory compatibility issue, then the replacement memory should worl fine.

 

memtest86 may not be all that accurate at times, so your RAM may indeed be faulty or incompatible as others have noted.
Do you happen to know what brand is your HP RAM? Most of the nx9420's I know have Nanya ones and they seem to work fine with Kingston.

 

yeah not sure what flavour the original HP stick is, but I'm about to get the screwdriver out and get stuck into the memory slot under the keyboard, and we'll see whats going on.

thanks for the responses all!

UPDATE: Well, looks like the problem is the expansion slot - I moved the stick of new RAM into the primary slot (the one under the keyboard), and it worked fine. I poped the original HP memory into the expansion slot, and sure enough it started locking up again. So I figured that has nailed it as a compatibility issue. Whipped down to the shop and bought another stick of Kingston RAM, same spec (double-checked it with the guy). Popped it into the expansion slot, and it started locking up the same way it did with the original HP ram. I've also noticed that it does seem a lot warmer back there, so I'm going to run with either the slot is damaged in some way, or the extra memory is blocking the airflow around there which is causing to to overheat, which might be what is causing the lockup.

I'll probably return the 2x 1Gb sticks and grab a 2Gb stick, and pop that in, which should be plenty for the rest of the life-span of this machine.

Chrixx: the HP stick was a Samsung chip, labeled as 1GB 2Rx8 PC2-5300S-555-12-E3, with the second line M470T2953C3-CE6 0626)

 

Sorry for replying to this old thread, but I had to say that you are not alone with these kind of problems. I actually had almost exactly the same problems and I also tried the same exchanges between internal and external slots (before reading this thread ). I also have the same memory chips (Kingston "valueram" and Samsung). Now running fine with only Kingston in internal slot.

I think i will also get one 2 GB stick...