Genericname

I recently bought a stick of RAM for a laptop, and it appears to be defective.

However, the site I bought it from charges a fee if you RMA a product and it's found to be working, so I wanted to make very sure it's the RAM that's the problem and not, well, me.

The laptop is a Gateway M305CRV. Here are two links to it's specs. I included both because one says the RAM it takes is 200 pin, and the other says 144. I don't know why as they're for the exact same laptop. I just assume it's a mistake of some kind.

But at any rate, the stick I got matched the known good one already in the laptop pin-wise.

http://support.gateway.com/s/Manuals/Mobile/8509302.pdf

http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/...1715sp58.shtml

And here is a link the the RAM that I bought that isn't working:

http://www.partspc.com/ProductDetail...58&ProdID=4877

Anyhoo, when I installed it in the free RAM slot, the laptop wouldn't post. It would stay on while the lights along the front flashed.

I tried it in each slot with the known good stick installed, and I tried it by itself in both slots. Laptop won't post in any configuration.

The one thing that has me a little concerned is that, on the working stick that's in the laptop, the memory is organized in 8 chips on each side of the stick, whereas on the new, non-working stick, it's organized in 4 on each side.

I assume that doesn't make a difference though, as it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the laptop specs or in the listing for the RAM that I purchased.

But yeah, both sticks are 512 MB PC2100 266 MHz DDR, so I would think the stick I bought would work fine...And even if they weren't the same speed, my understanding is the faster stick would simply work at the speed of the slower...But I wanted to mention the difference in the physical structure in case that could someone make a difference.

So is the RAM just defective as I strongly suspect, or could the difference in how many chips are on the new stick somehow render it incompatible with the board I'm using it in?

Thanks in advance for your help.

phantomofrussia

do you know if the good memory in the system already is 200 pin or 144 pin?

Genericname

I believe it's 200 pin.

The new stick I got was advertised as 200 pin. When I got it, I popped out the good stick and held them close to each other, and the pins matched up perfectly.

phantomofrussia

well then everything points to a DOA RAM chip.

unless anybody else noticed something i missed....