Mixing two types of RAM?

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Dan03

New Member
Here's what happened. Recently one of my computer died, so I decided to put the RAM from it into my other computer which had 2gb on it and I added 2gb more. The computer booted up but still only said 2gb, and was actually running extremely slow, almost unusable in fact.. So I turned it off, and took the new RAM out, but now it wouldnt boot at all! Lights came on for a few seconds then went off again with no screen activity. I tried a few different things until eventually I tried moving the original RAM from slot 1 to slot 2 and finally it boots again as normal.

What was going on there? and what caused it? I've never heard that putting the wrong type of RAM into a computer can damage it before, although I do know very little about hardware. Is my RAM slot now dead?

The computer I am trying to upgrade is a Toshiba L670 14F. The RAM came from an acer 4810t although I believe the previous owner said he changed parts on it so I'm not sure if it is the original RAM or not.

Edit: I just checked the specs of both laptops and they both say "DDR3 RAM (1,066 MHz)". Can't be sure as it doesn't say almost anything useful on the RAM it's self but still...

Any ideas?

Thanks!
 
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Some ram don't play well together and usually the cmos has to be reset in order to the machine to boot. Do you know what brand the ram sticks were?
 
I could somewhat understand if it just wasn't working, or not working properly, but it seems to have damaged the computer as the ram slot which was completely fine before now seems to not work at all since the attempted upgrade... Is that even possible? I've searched google a bunch and nowhere does it say it can damage your computer by using incompatible ram.

The RAM was taken from a 4810t which is supposed (I'm not the laptops first owner) to be ddr3, the same as the toshiba. I can't tell much from looking at the RAM but I took a photo of all 3 sticks together, the 1st is the toshiba's 2gb, the 2nd two are from the acer.
 
unplug the power cable and disconnect the battery. Hold down the power button for 30 seconds. Replace battery and power cable. Enter BIOS and load defaults. Save and shutdown.

Disconnect power cable and battery and replace RAM.

Try to boot.
 
Okedokey said:
unplug the power cable and disconnect the battery. Hold down the power button for 30 seconds. Replace battery and power cable. Enter BIOS and load defaults. Save and shutdown.

Disconnect power cable and battery and replace RAM.

Try to boot.
Click to expand...

I load the defaults in bios before inserting the additional RAM right?

Doing after seemed logical to me, just wanna make sure I don't misunderstand.
 
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