Memory or Motherboard problems

Hi. I have a Pavilion a6130n, running Vista Home Premium. I have an AMD Dual Core Processor.

A couple of years ago, I turned my computer on, only to be welcomed by a series of error beeps. I ended up removing a memory module (512MB), and it booted fine. I assumed that the module was bad.

A couple of months back, I turned my computer on, and it went to the blue HP welcome screen, and stayed there frozen. It did that for a while, and I eventually left it alone.

I booted it today, and was reported another series of error beeps. It ended up being another memory module (1 GB).

Currently, DIMM 1 (blue) and DIMM 4 (black) are empty, and the computer will boot up. DIMM 2 has a 512MB module in it, and DIMM 3 has a 1 GB Module in it.

Also, once I noticed that it was going to boot up, I plugged the VGA adapter back in, and the display was garbled. It looked as though it was going to hang again, so I shut it down.

Currently, it boots up fine. I ran an HP update to see if it would report any updates. It updated the Advisor and something else. No big deal.

I contacted support and they suggested running the Hardware Diagnostic tool. I did this, and there were no reported failures.

1. Anyone have any ideas? I put the "bad" memory back in the machine using the 2 working DIMM slots, and they work fine, so the RAM is good.

2. Any way to test the DIMM slots?

3. If they are bad, do I just have to get a new motherboard to alleviate the problem?

 

By the sounds of things i would say your DIMM slots have malfunctioned some where along the lines, if you can boot up using your gig n half in the slots that work you could try memtest and it will tell you if you RAM is bad, if you dont get any errors then your fine and its just your dimm slots, as far as im aware they can not be fixed, but unless you need more then 1.5gig of RAM i wouldnt bother getting a new motherboard unless you start having more problems.

http://www.memtest86.com/

 

#2-Other than taking it to a computer shop that does serious repair work or sending it back to HP, no. I would say if the 2 sticks that were in those two slots work fine in the other slots you've pretty much done the testing.

3- Yup.

Try doing a search on your model about memory slots going bad to see if it's a common problem. If it is, maybe HP has refurb'd motherboards for it. Or if your case will accept a standard motherboard (Dell & HP sometimes use made-just-for-them boards so a "standard" board won't line up right) find one for the CPU, memory and video card slot type you have (PCIe, AGP,PCI) and swap the parts over.

Sam

 

Thanks for the reply you guys. I figured as much.

I will contact HP one more time. Both times I contacted them (by chat and by phone) they said that they couldn't see anything that it qualified for, as far as recalls or manufacturer's defects.

Thanks again.

Ian