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Inspiron 9300 recognizing only 1 Ram module :(

post #1 of 5
4/23/08 at 5:06pm
Thread Starter 
Hi

I've got an Inspiron 9300 that until recently was running on 1.25G of Ram.

That's a 256MB chip and a 1GB chip.

Being greedy, I purchased a 2GB chip and installed it.

On its own, the BIOS & windows recognize 2GB of ram.

However, with either of the other ram chips, only 1 is ever recognized! (The one in Ram socket A - or whatever the technical term for that is )

Bizzarely, if I put in the 2gb chip and the 1gb chip, the BIOS and Windows both detect only one of them (2gb since I've put that in slot A), but SiSoft Sandra shows both of them correctly!!!

I've tried this on firmware revisions A05, A04, and A02 [the lappy initially shipped with A03 but I can't seem to find that anywhere!]

Anyone got any ideas ? I was really excited to be playing with 3gigs (as useless as that is compared to 2!), and appreciate all the help I can get

Thanks in advance!
C.
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post #2 of 5
4/24/08 at 5:12am
The chipset the 9300 uses only supports 2 GB RAM. So no BIOS is gonna let you use any more than that. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about this.
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post #3 of 5
4/24/08 at 4:32pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for replying.

Can you be more specific please? I'm not as technically savvy as I'd like to be, I just opened Sandra, read "Maximum Installable Memory 4GB" and thought that should be it..

What is the "chipset" and is there anything I can do about this?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm doing my research but finding it difficult to find many real answers that make sense to me

Thanks again,
C.
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post #4 of 5
5/1/08 at 12:38pm
There's no getting around the 2GB limit. When the Inspiron 9300 was new nobody had 2GB modules available. So Dell didn't provision the system to recognize anything greater than a 1GB module installed in either socket. SiSoft sandra can recognize both modules because they're electronically connected.
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post #5 of 5
5/2/08 at 10:20pm
In this case, Dell is not at fault. The actual chipset is what limits the RAM, however, I am not saying the BIOS supports more physical ram (not that it even matters). And I'm pretty sure you can put a 2 GB module in one socket, however, you will not be able to use the other socket whilst doing so (or the system likely will not boot).

Anyway, sorry I took so long to respond cyclonus but I hardly check this section. You can think of the motherboard, the chipset, and the processor as the heart and brains of the computer. When you're motherboard/chipset combo does not support something (and this something cant be installed through an update), you have no option but to get another motherboard. And with a new motherboard for a Dell laptop, you would have to buy a host of new parts. Hence, you'd essentially be buying a whole new computer.

You can think of the hierarchy as Chipset -> BIOS -> Operating system with chipset being at the bottommost level giving it the most importance (in computers).
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