HGL-30 hibernation and loose memory

Problem solved, thought I'd share.

I'd been battling a hibernation issue on my HGL-30 - it would refuse to enter hibernation, basically - but got that fixed with a Windows patch. Then I had another problem that I wasn't sure was related. The computer now entered hibernation just fine, but every few times I tried to wake it back up, it would fail, and I'd get a choice between trying again (which never worked) or deleting the restoration data and booting from scratch.

Today I did something stupid that allowed me to diagnose the problem. I noticed my system was only showing 1GB of RAM, even though I have 2GB installed. I put my system into hibernation and opened the memory compartment. I noticed that one of the sticks wasn't firmly seated, so I pushed it in and un-hibernated. Well, duh, you can't add memory when the machine is just hibernated, so I got the "try again or delete restoration data" choice. Hmm, I thought, shutting off power completely. I removed one stick and lo and behold, the system came back in its pre-hibernated state.

I'm guessing that the memory was loose this whole time, sometimes being connected and sometimes not. If it shifted between those two states after I hibernated, the system couldn't deal with the hardware change and needed to reboot.

I don't know if the laptop itself has a bad memory module design or if I just installed them incompetently (twice), but if this problem has plagued anyone else, I hope this helps!

 

I haven't heard any reports of this. May just be the one stick wasn't seated well when you installed it.