Memory Loss

M

mjt

Is it possible for your computer to lose RAM? I shut it down, disconnected everything and moved it to a new location. At first when I tried to start it I couldn't; one of the messages I got was that the memory has decreased or something. It started the second time, but now it's showing about 256 MB, and I have 512 MB.

Did I disconnect one of my RAM chips when I was moving my computer? If so, where do I find the RAM chips to reconnect it?
 
If you are asking where the RAM is physically located, it is most often placed vertically on the motherboard and can be hidden by any or all of your drives. If you remove the side cover of your Dell, you should see two slender, tall, approx. 6", cards placed parallel to each other somewhere in the middle of the motherboard. They should be seated by way of plastic clips located at the top and bottom of each card. You can try pushing the cards in to see if they have unseated themselves. Hope that helps.
 

hi,

you can recognise your computer RAM by a small rectangle card with a few computer chips on it. It should be about 1 inch tall and 4-5 inch wide held vertically/perpenticular to your computer main motherboard. Based on your discription, you should have 2 X 256 MB RAM in your computer.

First switch-off the power & open up your computer. Locate the RAM and make sure they are firmly held onto the slot in the motherboard.

check this for more detail :-

http://www.learn2.com/06/0671/0671.asp
 
The easiest thing to do is to go into the BIOS configuration. You typically do this by pressing ESC, DEL or F1 early in the boot process.

BIOS has a field indicating how much memory it believes your system has. If it says 256MB, you know that one of your DIMMs is not being recognizied. Given that your computer boots the fault is in the high-numbered memory banks. Try to reseat the memory modules.

Before touching any of the memory modules, make sure you wear one of the anti-static straps. Else it's very likely that your memory chips will fail within a few months.

 
(Antistatic) Wrist Strap:

It's a wrist strap that you attach to your computer case to ensure that you're not charged relatively to the computer. If you touch memory chips without being "discharged" there is a high riskthat you'll cause damage to the chips.

Here is a link to a 3M document. Check out the "Wrist Straps and other Grounding Systems" chapter.

http://www.3m.com/ehpd/catalog/static_control_catalog.pdf
 
seems we're all in pretty much in agreement. looks like one of your stick of ram got loose in the move. this is most likely the culprit.
 
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