Dell notebook - memory not showing up correctly

Trying to help out a friend who just got a hand-me-down Dell Latitude CPT
notebook. The person who gave it to him did a fresh install of XP on it
before he passed it along. The laptop only had 64 MB or memory, so he bought
two 256 MB dimms. When he put them in and booted up, bios reported only 320
MB of memory. According to the specs on this model, it should be able to
handle 512 MB, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any ideas? Thanks in
advance for any troubleshooting tips you can pass along.

Try updating the bios, you can get an update from Dells website under
downloads and drivers. You can also run a diagnostic check from
their website, which will tell you if anything is wrong with it.

wrote in message
oups.com...
nikko wrote:
Trying to help out a friend who just got a hand-me-down Dell Latitude CPT
notebook. The person who gave it to him did a fresh install of XP on it
before he passed it along. The laptop only had 64 MB or memory, so he
bought
two 256 MB dimms. When he put them in and booted up, bios reported only
320
MB of memory. According to the specs on this model, it should be able to
handle 512 MB, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any ideas? Thanks in
advance for any troubleshooting tips you can pass along.

It could be that one of the memory sticks is defective or not connected
properly.

Try doing just one at a time. See if both of them register okay. If
they both seem to work, then try both again together.


Hey there. Thanks for the reply. Well, I tried each stick individually and
in both cases the bios said only recognized it as 64 MB of RAM. So it's
just messed up all the way around.

"nikko" wrote in message
. ..

wrote in message
oups.com...
nikko wrote:
Trying to help out a friend who just got a hand-me-down Dell Latitude
CPT
notebook. The person who gave it to him did a fresh install of XP on it
before he passed it along. The laptop only had 64 MB or memory, so he
bought
two 256 MB dimms. When he put them in and booted up, bios reported only
320
MB of memory. According to the specs on this model, it should be able to
handle 512 MB, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any ideas? Thanks in
advance for any troubleshooting tips you can pass along.

It could be that one of the memory sticks is defective or not connected
properly.

Try doing just one at a time. See if both of them register okay. If
they both seem to work, then try both again together.


Hey there. Thanks for the reply. Well, I tried each stick individually
and in both cases the bios said only recognized it as 64 MB of RAM. So
it's just messed up all the way around.


are they the correct specification dims for that model............

In article , "nikko"
wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
nikko wrote:
Trying to help out a friend who just got a hand-me-down Dell Latitude CPT
notebook. The person who gave it to him did a fresh install of XP on it
before he passed it along. The laptop only had 64 MB or memory, so he
bought
two 256 MB dimms. When he put them in and booted up, bios reported only
320
MB of memory. According to the specs on this model, it should be able to
handle 512 MB, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any ideas? Thanks in
advance for any troubleshooting tips you can pass along.

It could be that one of the memory sticks is defective or not connected
properly.

Try doing just one at a time. See if both of them register okay. If
they both seem to work, then try both again together.


Hey there. Thanks for the reply. Well, I tried each stick individually and
in both cases the bios said only recognized it as 64 MB of RAM. So it's
just messed up all the way around.

It is possible your laptop uses the 440BX chipset. That
chipset has an issue with RAM past a certain density. For
example, on a desktop motherboard, a DIMM with (16) 16Mx8
chips works right, and reports 256MB. A single sided DIMM
of (8) 32Mx8 chips doesn't, and returns the wrong size when
inserted in a computer. The single sided 256MB DIMM has
earned itself the moniker "high density" DIMM, and is known
to be a bad buy for a 440BX chipset.

SODIMMs are a different size and have room for a different
number of chips. But the chipset will still have the same
addressing limits as it would in a desktop system, so the
same density issues occur with a laptop using a 440BX too.

If you go to the Crucial web site, you can search for the
correct SODIMM for your laptop. Kingston also has a
search engine.

I have used four 256MB low density Crucial DIMMs on a
440BX system, for a total of 1GB, so I know it can work.

This is an example of an SODIMM with room for 16 chips.
8 on each side. Perhaps this is the type that would work
in the machine. I got this part number from the Kingston
site. Check to make sure I selected the right version of
Latitude.

http://www.ramshopping.fr/images/pro...SP7500-256.jpg

Paul

nikko wrote:
Trying to help out a friend who just got a hand-me-down Dell Latitude
CPT notebook. The person who gave it to him did a fresh install of XP
on it before he passed it along. The laptop only had 64 MB or memory,
so he bought two 256 MB dimms. When he put them in and booted up,
bios reported only 320 MB of memory. According to the specs on this
model, it should be able to handle 512 MB, so I'm not sure what the
problem is. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for any troubleshooting tips
you can pass along.

Sounds like a memory speed problem, e.g. laptop requires PC100 memory and he
installed PC133.

Many older laptops are very fussy about memory speed.

--
James

Did you try them in both memory slots? Maybe one of the slots is bad.
If it still reports 320 MB with both DIMMs installed look in the BIOS for memory configuration. It should show how much memory it sees in each slot.

nikko wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
nikko wrote:
Trying to help out a friend who just got a hand-me-down Dell Latitude CPT
notebook. The person who gave it to him did a fresh install of XP on it
before he passed it along. The laptop only had 64 MB or memory, so he
bought
two 256 MB dimms. When he put them in and booted up, bios reported only
320
MB of memory. According to the specs on this model, it should be able to
handle 512 MB, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any ideas? Thanks in
advance for any troubleshooting tips you can pass along.

It could be that one of the memory sticks is defective or not connected
properly.

Try doing just one at a time. See if both of them register okay. If
they both seem to work, then try both again together.


Hey there. Thanks for the reply. Well, I tried each stick individually and
in both cases the bios said only recognized it as 64 MB of RAM. So it's
just messed up all the way around.

--
Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Does the laptop have integrated video that is using some of the ram as Vram?

"nikko" wrote in message
...
Trying to help out a friend who just got a hand-me-down Dell Latitude CPT
notebook. The person who gave it to him did a fresh install of XP on it
before he passed it along. The laptop only had 64 MB or memory, so he
bought
two 256 MB dimms. When he put them in and booted up, bios reported only
320
MB of memory. According to the specs on this model, it should be able to
handle 512 MB, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any ideas? Thanks in
advance for any troubleshooting tips you can pass along.

One of 2 things:
If there is 64 MB on board, then one of the DIMMS is not installed correctly
or is not working with that memory (try swapping slots)

- or (more likely) -
one of the DIMMS currently installed is 64 MB!

Good luck.
--
Thanks,
TheBurgerMan
at
gmail.com
--
"nikko" wrote in message
...
Trying to help out a friend who just got a hand-me-down Dell Latitude CPT
notebook. The person who gave it to him did a fresh install of XP on it
before he passed it along. The laptop only had 64 MB or memory, so he
bought two 256 MB dimms. When he put them in and booted up, bios reported
only 320 MB of memory. According to the specs on this model, it should be
able to handle 512 MB, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance for any troubleshooting tips you can pass along.