Memory failure

Nostromo

Nostromo

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Dominic
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Hi all
I have an old Dell precision t5500 (i know it's not the best, but it does me fine) which I mainly use for lightroom and a bit of Photoshop.
I rarely turn it off and just put it into sleep mode, now the other day it went stupidly slow, it would take about 30-40 seconds for the cursor to react to mouse movement (and even then it was all jerky). So I turned the computer off and restarted it. As it was beginning it's boot up this message came up on screen
20171119_104558-1612x1209.jpg

Not knowing much about computers I hit F1 and let windows carry on loading.

Now today I checked to see how much of my ram is working and the computer says "8 gig is not available" (I have 12gb ram), so obviously that only leaves me with 4gb of ram.
But if only one 4gb ram is not working (dimm2), why am I missing 8gb.
This is a pic of the ram
20171119_104032-1209x1612.jpg 20171119_104046-1209x1612.jpg

And this is where they fit
20171119_104258-1612x1209.jpg

Also is this a pretty bog standard ram that I can pick up anywhere?
 
I'd be tempted to take them all out and try them one at a time in slot 1 for starters.

Turning the PC off rather than using sleep mode is kinder to RAM as it clears the memory every time.
 
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Clever little machine to tell you there is a problem.

I guess you have 3 memory sticks of 4GB each. If #2 has failed it does not go on to see #3 hence it says you got only 4GB (If I understood correctly). Remove #3 blow some air if you got over slot #2 and fit the memory there. You should get 8Gb. You can chance refitting the memory removed from #2 to #3 and see what happens. You can buy memory in many places but with Xeon processors often they use ECC memory blah blah blah
I would rather be using branded memory and all from one manufacturer than mixing and matching.

Corsair says you need
  • DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600)and I add it should be ECC
  • [Kingston says similar but is trying to flog you a 16Gb single stick? or 4 sticks ? for £160ish
 
Given what Forkie said, I would turn off the PC at the mains if I remove memory just in case it has a trickle of power (been there and blew a Raid controller)
 
TLR-330 said:
Given what Forkie said, I would turn off the PC at the mains if I remove memory just in case it has a trickle of power (been there and blew a Raid controller)
Click to expand...

Yep. It's always a good idea when tinkering with anything inside a PC case.
 
Ha, now that I remember I have also blown a graphics card :-) but my excuse is it was on its way out.
 
Thanks very much both of you.
I will remove #3 and put it into #2 slot and see how it goes.
I always remove the power supply from the computer before I open it up, better to be safe than sorry :)
 
I've just put my new RAM in (new one has the same part number as the old one, so there shouldn't be any compatibility problems) and all seems fine and dandy.
Thank you all for your time and help.
 
Use a fiberglass brush to clean the gold contacts on all the DIMMS, reseat and try again.

If it still errors then the RAM's cheap nowadays.
 
GreenNinja67 said:
Use a fiberglass brush to clean the gold contacts on all the DIMMS, reseat and try again.

If it still errors then the RAM's cheap nowadays.
Click to expand...
I did try swapping around ram from DIMM 2 (failed ram), into DIMM3 and got failure alert for DIMM 3. So I knew it had actually failed.
But as you say RAM is cheap.
 
Now you found that, you can get three more sticks and populate slots 3-6 (read the manual though) :-)
 
Hp memory in a Dell, presumably it's been upgraded?

Memory issues aside for the moment, do you have 32 or 64 bit os installed. That could account for the odd figure available.
 
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