Installing memory on Acer Aspire 9500 notebook

Does anyone have any information on how easy or difficult it is to add a memory chip to an Acer Aspire 9500?

I am by no means advanced in the hardware arena, but I have done things like open up an iMac to add extra hard drives, so I am not absolutely helpless, either.

My laptop runs a bit slowly, and while I plan to wipe the drive soon, and reinstall the system disk to clean things up, I figure adding to the original 256 or 500 mb included with the thing might be helpful.

I'm just wondering if I can do it myself, or if I should plan for the expense of paying to have it done professionally.

 

Check out page 74 on this PDF document.

http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/data/7117/documents/AS9500-ENG-OLM.pdf

It shows the compartment you need to open to access the memory. Open that up and let post back whether there is one chip or two there.

Hope this helps.

 

Looks like only one chip in there right now ... also easily accessible for adding another.

So I'm assuming with a little bit of caution, I ought to have little to no problem installing a memory chip myself.

(So have prices really dropped down to $20 for a 1gb memory card for a laptop, or are the prices I am seeing for internet searches unreasonably low?)

Tripling my memory certainly should assist with keeping up the speed. Reinstalling my system from scratch should do the other part. (I've been using this laptop as my main computer for 2 1/2 years now ... too much accumulated junk and problems.)

 

Here's a link to Crucial.com website for your laptop for a memory upgrade.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Aspire 9500 Series

If there is two slots available then I would recommend because of the price that you could get two 1GB Modules of memory. One module would suffice easily though.

Hope this helps...

 

Very cool! Prices really are this low. Maybe I will go the entire 2GB ... extra memory almost never hurts. XP ought to have no problem accessing the entirety of 2GB ... and quadruple memory would be nice!

Thanks again for the information, and the link to the manual. (After 2.5 years, I don't know if I still have mine, and if I do, I sure don't know where it is!)

Time to see if anybody is still open for buying memory tonight, or if I will have to wait 'til tomorrow.

 

They're not. Part of my job is selling RAM upgrades, the other part is doing tech support for them, and memory pricing has tanked in the past couple of months.

 

Well, that's to my good! I can actually afford to upgrade, right now, at these prices!

Checking CompUSA first thing in the morning to see if they are close to these prices, or whether I have to go mail order! I might leave memory problems behind as early as tomorrow morning!

Very cool!

 

Well, went out and bought two 1gb memory chips. Had to pay $20 instead of $15 to get them live, but saved all the hassle of waiting for mail, and possible shipping charges.

Installed both chips in the store, and the computer refused to start up. Then the guy tells me that, even though the internet says both my computer and XP can handle 2GB, that some computers will not actually allow you to install the maximum and work. (That's dumb.)

So I used 1 1gb chip, and the 512mb that was already in it, and with that, it would boot up. It was easy to install, only cost $20, and my computer now has three times the memory, and seems to be running smoother.

Still going to wipe it clean soon and start over ... but this was certainly an improvement.

 

In addition to being dumb, it's also incorrect. Take out the 512MB and install first one of the 1GB ones, then the other, to make sure they both work. If they do, use either one of them or your old 512MB stick to test both slots, to make sure they both work.

Yes, sometimes the memory controller on a motherboard freaks out when you install the maximum amount of RAM, but it is very rare, and I would never jump to that as the first explanation for why a laptop won't start. Maybe the seventh or eighth, but not the first. So let's rule out the other possible causes before we believe the guy who will have to either refund you or give you free parts if one of them is bad, shall we?

 

Actually, I did test both chips to make sure they both worked. Either one would work, but both would not work together. Either one would work along with the 512mb chip ... just not two 1gb ones.

I'm satisfied ... and it didn't cost me anything extra or cause any problems or anything ... since I never left the store, they had no problem taking the extra memory chip back and returning my money on the spot.

All I know is that with both memory chips in, when you tried to turn on the computer, it would not boot up ... it just made this low volume very rapid beeping sound until I turned it off again.

 

What speed are the new chips, and what speed is the old one? Acer Aspire laptops that shipped with PC2-4200 only work with that speed, so if the new RAM is PC2-5300 your laptop needs to have the old one installed or it won't realize it has any memory at all.

DDR2 memory is backwards compatible, which means that if you install PC2-5300 in a motherboard that can't run faster than PC2-4200, the memory will clock itself down to that speed and run as PC2-4200. However, Acer sort of forget to tell all their PC2-4200 laptops about that little feature, so those motherboards don't know that faster memory also counts as valid memory.

If you are happy with the upgrade though, that's what matters the most. Enjoy the faster computer.

 

Mimsy in my experience to add to your post, it might have just needed a BIOS upgrade. I've worked on two computers computer within the past couple of months where the memory that the customer bought for it didn't work until the BIOS was updated to the newest version.

Just thought I would throw that out there.

Glad to know your happy with the solution you received Batchman.

 

That would be where the problem was, then. The memory was 5300, and they told me it was backward compatible ... from what you say, it sounds like that is true for everything except Acer. But as noted, I am happy, so no real harm.

I guess somehow having one chip of the old speed allows it to also access the one chip at new speed, since I do now have the entire 1.5gb showing.

 

It's not true for older Dell laptops either. Or for any Mac anywhere, ever. Just FYI, if you buy a new computer at some point

Close. Having the old one in there gives the laptop a memory stick it recognizes as valid memory, so it can boot. That old one then makes the new one run as if it as a PC2-4200. That's what the backwards compatibility means--when you mix speeds, they will all adapt and try to run at the speed of the slowest. So your laptop thinks you have two PC2-4200 installed. It thinks one of them is very weird, so the old chip needs to be there to translate between them, but the important thing is that the new ones comes across as a PC2-4200 in the end.