2GB / 4GB Memory Seen - Dell Inspiron 1525 - Windows Vista Home Premium - 32-Bit

Hello there,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 that I am looking at for a friend. I'm just going through the READ ME First steps on her behalf, before being able to post logs as I believe there to be some malware on there slowing the machine down.

However, everytime I boot it up, it sees different memory.

It's got 4GB installed, but it will sometimes see 2GB, sometimes see 4GB.

I've run MemTest86 on it but it says the memory is ok.

I've booted with each of the memory in the first slot and it boots up fine and stays stable.

I've never seen this before, and so am a bit stumped.

It was used by her ex-husband as a developer laptop, so I'm uninstalling a load of the programs he had on there in the hope it might have some effect, but I can't imagine that being the problem.

I'm just about to take it apart once again to clean the contacts once again and see if there's anything else on there that's not quite right. I haven't checked whether there's something in the slots themselves. I know my first ever computer had memory with dirty contacts and it caused me endless problems, but that was more with it constantly rebooting. That was eventually fixed by my University Lecturer who rubbed the contacts clean with an eraser and all was well (after the machine had gone back to DOS only due to it crashing when I tried to install Windows 95, then Windows 3.11).

This stays stable with whatever memory is seen during bootup, and I can't see anything in the BIOS to try to aid the detection.

Any ideas anyone?

Regards,

 

Since the memory tests fine and each stick works in the first slot, the problem seems to be with slot #2. It sounds like it works sometimes and other times it does not.
Use a magnifying glass and clean the slot out; see if that makes a difference.

 

Test the memory sticks one by one in the computer, make sure you use a slot you know for a fact is good. Sometimes, if you have a bad stick in the lot, a computer will be smart enough to ignore that one and run on the rest.

 

Hello there,

I managed to clean the second (and the first) slots out. There were what I suspect remnants of the screwhole washers that must have perished and fallen into the laptop when whoever opened it previously.

I've rebooted it a few times now and used it as I did before.

So far, I haven't encountered any blue screens or memory dumps, nor has the BIOS detected differing amounts of memory like it did previously.

Each and every boot is seeing the full 4GB each time.

Everything seems nice and stable (there we go, famous last words, blue screen imminent - ).

Thanks for the advice.

:drool