Dell Insprion 8500 with two sticks of 256MB

went through all the troubleshooting on the website and chatted with a tech rep, they said it seems that i have a bad slot and should get it tested....

opinions?? Or is there someone who could do this for free/cheap?? or would it even be worth it?

1/8/2008 10:47:14 PM

test it yourself

just take ram in and out of the slots and see if one of the slots is bad

also run memtest on your memory

1/8/2008 10:55:31 PM

i second memtest86

1/8/2008 11:19:48 PM

well it seems one of the slots is bad, i even tried swapping the RAM from another inspiron but it still seems it must be a slot

this sucks because i had 512MB until a few hours ago, then i had to restart the computer and i got the "the amount of system memory has changed" message

Haven't been able to fix it.....and only running 256MB SUCKS!

anyone wanna help a brotha?

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 12:16 AM. Reason : ]

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 12:33 AM. Reason : ]

1/9/2008 12:16:02 AM

how is someone supposed to help - its a hardware problem. if its under warranty, get dell to replace it. if not, look for the mobo on ebay

1/9/2008 10:31:57 AM

^point taken, i'm learning though

i guess i have two options, a new motherboard or just get a single stick of RAM

there are really cheap motherboards on ebay and then there are tested ones that are really expensive (~$200)...........they all come in the case, so all i'd have to do is add my cru's (hard drive, cd-rom, sound card, etc.) and the screen. This sould be easy enough, right???

Or i could just buy a single RAM module of 512MB or maybe upgrade to 1GB, is there any disadvantage in just running off of a single stick of RAM???

1/9/2008 11:38:44 AM

n/m

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 12:28 PM. Reason : .]

1/9/2008 12:27:27 PM

if your slot is bad, replacing the ram will not matter


if the slot is bad, the motherboard is starting to go and should be replaced.

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 3:02 PM. Reason : i would contact dell via their online chat and give them your service tag]

here is the link: http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/gen/chat?c=us&l=en&s=gen



[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 3:02 PM. Reason : chatting with them is so much faster and easier than calling ]

1/9/2008 3:01:41 PM

2 DIMMS, only 1 is bad, i think he was talking about replacing the 1x 256MB DIMM for a larger one.

1/9/2008 3:31:44 PM

^^already did the chat thing, they think its a bad slot too

^yes

edit: there is a really cheap mobo on ebay with a "bad ac adapter"....i'm assuming he means the jack on the computer itself, how hard would that be to swap???

[Edited on January 9, 2008 at 6:30 PM. Reason : ]

1/9/2008 6:22:27 PM