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Martin TamFlag for Australia

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Drivers not working after memory upgrade

I hope someone have experienced the same thing as what I am having. I have a toshiba U400 laptop with 2GB ram. As a typical laptop it has all the gear built in. Wireless, bluetooth, etc.

It has 1 extra memory slot left and I want to upgrade the memory to 4GB. I understand XP can only run 3GB but I dont mine. When it is the right time I will upgrade it Vista anyway.

The problem. I order 1 X 2GB ram from Toshiba and I am certain it is compatible with my laptop. And my laptop bios can take a max of 4GB ram.

When I install the new memory, the laptop boots up but I lost my wireless card. When I look into the device manager, there is a problem with a device driver, Intel family PCI express Root port 6 to be exact. Other than that the laptop is having trouble shutting down.

I then took out the new ram and reboot. The laptop went fine again. My wireless card is back.

I then swap the new ram with the old one, just to test to make sure there is nothing wrong with Ram. The laptop is again fine.

I have seen this kind of problem before and it is mainly due to the memory allocation to the many built in device with the new addition of memory, the device driver is having difficulties with the new mem allocation. The one way to fix it is to do a clean install of XP should resolve the problem. But this time round I do not want to re-install.

Has anyone seen this before and suggestion to fix this without wiping out the OS?

Thanks
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Thanks for the comment.

Talker2004, there is nothing wrong with the memory, as per my description, I swap the old mem out and had the new one install, just to see if there are any problem with the new RAM. Had been testing it and nothing is wrong.

Darr247, in the device manager looking at the offending device, the resource just said resource for this device is unavailable, just uninstalling other device.  It seem with the new ram installed, that device is just simply gone. I cant even do a manually assign resource to get to temp working.
just found a bios update from Toshiba. Will give it a go...
> in the device manager looking at the offending device,
> the resource just said resource for this device is unavailable

Did you use View->Resources by type in Device Manager and look at the memory tree as I suggested?

From that description is sounds like you're using the default of View->Devices by type and looking at the wireless card.
One idea, dont swap them rather put the new ram in the new slot and remove 1 stick old ram but leave it's slot empty. could be the way windows identifies with the ram in the slots as an addition rather than replacement.
Try reseating it as well, sometimes if the ram is not inserted with the right click in
causes some kind of hickup.


I agree with Merete, you should try the new ram by itself without the old ram. If it works then you have two sticks of ram that simply don't play nice together. I have had this problem before too.

Ever since it happened i will not add ram to my machine unless it is the exact same make or model as the stuff in there. I often order my machines maxed out on ram to avoid the issue. But sometimes it cheaper to order the machine with minimal ram pull all the ram and simply max it out with modules ordered from crucial.com.
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x86fix

It sounds like a bad memory slot to me.  Either that or some dust in the slot.  Blowit out with canned air and then try removing both pieces.  Put only the original ram into the slot that you have been putting the new ram into.  See if that works.  If so then put the new ram in the original slot and see what happens.
Bios upgraded and it works. Thanks talker2004