So I visited a neighbor of my girlfriend’s. The family has a five year old dell with a Pentium 4 CPU. The machine only had 512MB of computer memory (RAM) and beyond the virus and malware issues the machine was dog slow. It shouldn’t be this slow, even with just 512MB of memory. But with more memory in the machine it should fly, right? Well I suggested the family order more RAM, we found a Kingston Value Rame (DDR2 2GB kit) for $37 with tax and shipping via Newegg.com. This is the same type that Crucial recommends and offers for sale, but about $5 or so cheaper.
Well the memory arrives a few days later and I go to install it, and of course, it didn’t work. A series of beeps tells me that the motherboard does NOT like the memory. Now I’m freaking out, they’ll have to return it, pay a $6-7 handing fee + shipping back to Newegg – not the kind of thing I want them to have to deal with. So I told them I have to run more tests and that I’ll take care of it. My girlfriend’s parents house is right down the block. They have a similar Dell, but a bit newer. So the thought occurs to me, see if the Kingston RAM works in their machine.
So we go over and I do my test. Their PC had 3GB of RAM total, two 1GB sticks and two 512MB sticks. So I replace the 1GB sticks with the new Kingston brand. The PC boots up fine without issue. Great! So now I need to see if the Dell labeled DDR2 1GB sticks from this PC works in the other family’s PC. So I run back over and put them back in and – hooray, it worked! 😀 The memory worked fine, the PC recognized it perfectly. Oddly enough the brand of the memory was also Kingston, but it had a Dell sticker on it. Whatever the reason for it working was beyond me, but I was so happy it worked. The PC runs slowly still and probably needs a repair or re-install of Windows. But the machine went from having 80MB of RAM free to 1.4GB of RAM free, which is a major improvement. A memory upgrade is far cheaper then buying a new laptop or desktop.
So the lesson is, spend the extra $5, get Crucial’s memory that’s guaranteed to work with your system. Especially if it’s a picky DELL!
Tags/Meta: Dell E310 machine will not boot with 2GB of RAM memory. Both RAM sticks from Kingston were DDR2 and the same speed, very strange!