New RAM problem

blinkey 101

Hi can any one help? i want to put more ram on my dell inspiron 1521. so a friend gave me 2x1 gig of ram from a toshiba of his the problem is when i put it on my laptop it was dead slow,so i checked the memory and was still saying 1 gig on lap top .
the toshiba memory sticks are 1 gig x 2rx8pc2-5300s are they compatible with my ltop or is it something im doing wrong?

Alanstrainor

Moved to it's own thread.

Fysh

TBH there are several reasons you might not be getting correct behaviour having swapped in memory from another laptop made by a different manufacturer, and with the information you've posted up I can't find enough information to say whether it should or should not work.

Check your BIOS settings (hit F2 on startup) and see how much RAM is detected when you've got your friend's RAM installed. You should also check what revision of the BIOS you have running - you can download an update to revision A06 for your laptop from the Dell site. (Make sure you know what you're doing/read the instructions first if you decide to upgrade your BIOS).

Having said that, my suggestion would be to go here on the Dell support site (that link goes straight to the "Original Configuration" page where you can enter the service tag and see the details of your hardware) and check the details of the RAM that originally shipped with your laptop.

Then I'd suggest going here, searching for "1521", and checking what options are listed.

Once you've done that, talk to your mate and find out the range and model number of the Toshiba laptop that originally had the RAM he gave you. Go here, go into "Product Support", then select the laptop and "Detailed specs". You can get the details of the RAM from there and compare it to the RAM that shipped with your machine or the suggested upgrades listed by the Kingston Memory Configurator. That should tell you if the RAM you're trying to use is suitable for your laptop.

If it isn't, you'll have to buy yourself new RAM to use for the upgrade, at which point the Memory Configurator comes in handy again

blinkey 101

thanks fysh for your quick reply im not to up on computers. this is my first laptop the toshiba i got them from was a L3oo series it was only a couple of days. old and came to a horrible end long story:eek: there is a code on the ram chip m470t2953ez3-ce6 would this mean any thing ?

blinkey 101

hi back again i have just changed from 1 gig to 2 gig no major difference. just one thing when i go into my comp its still telling me i have 1 gig any help please?