More Ram in dell Laptop?

Gingernuts31

Hi folks,

I want to upgrade my father Dell Vostro to 4 gig of ram, its running vista 32-bit and It currently only has 1 gig. The specs say the max is 2 gig but i've found plenty of forums with people saying they have been able to put in either 4 gig and get the 4 gig of memory on 64- bit vista or 4 gig on 32-bit vista but only getting 3 or 3.5 gig all on this model of laptop

If I didn't upgrade his OS to 64 bit installed 4 gig and got the 3 or 3.5 would it be ok or would it not work as well as 2 gig? I know more memory is better but with it being 3/3.5 and 4 would it be ok? Wouldn't do damage to it?

Dey were Sooted

someone else here might be able to tell you for sure what you could put in

upgrading to 64 to get .5GB would be pointless imo

you could run this scanner and it will tell you exactly what you can put in - if it says 4gb you can put that in - physically there will be 4gb in the computer but the OS will only read 3.5gb . that's to the best of my knowledge anyways

Gingernuts31

Dey were Sooted wrote: »

someone else here might be able to tell you for sure what you could put in

upgrading to 64 to get .5GB would be pointless imo

you could run this scanner and it will tell you exactly what you can put in - if it says 4gb you can put that in - physically there will be 4gb in the computer but the OS will only read 3.5gb . that's to the best of my knowledge anyways

I don't have the laptop here. I don't live with my parents. The manufactures spec says 2 GB max so I was wondering if the 4 GB goes into it will it do damage to it? I know it won't read all of the 4 GB because it's not meant to take that much according to Dell.

freestyla

Exact Dell Vostro model?
How many total RAM slots are there? how many in use? is there a free slot?

The best upgrade would be to upgrade from Vista to 7 or 8!! You can try run Microsoft upgrade Assistant bit and see if it offered Windows 8 for silly money?

Gingernuts31

freestyla wrote: »

Exact Dell Vostro model?
How many total RAM slots are there? how many in use? is there a free slot?

The best upgrade would be to upgrade from Vista to 7 or 8!! You can try run Microsoft upgrade Assistant bit and see if it offered Windows 8 for silly money?

2 RAM slots, 2x 512 in them at moment. I'll say it to him about running the upgrade assistant but I don't think he will. He only uses it for surfing and checking email, he just mentioned it was very slow. I know he cleans out history n all that. Hence the question bout RAM.

HelpWithIT

Gingernuts31 wrote: »

I don't have the laptop here. I don't live with my parents. The manufactures spec says 2 GB max so I was wondering if the 4 GB goes into it will it do damage to it? I know it won't read all of the 4 GB because it's not meant to take that much according to Dell.

I'm almost 100% certain that the above means a max 2 GB per slot = 4GB of which you will only get 3.5GB, which is more than enough, if you are still suffering from slowness ect after upgrade maybe it is down to spyware etc