I have a problem with an ASUS A9RP laptop running Vista Basic that I was 
asked to look at by my uncle. At first it was taking a VERY (1/2 hour) long 
time to boot. I took a brief look at the system properties and noticed that 
it was only running on 383Mb (Three Hundred and Eighty Three) of RAM instead 
of the factory spec of 512Mb. If I hadn't be so tired from fishing all day I 
should of realised something was wrong there and then as that was an odd 
amount of RAM L I suggested a RAM upgrade to 1Gb to start with, and he 
ordered the RAM right then online from Crucial.
  A few days later the memory arrives, and I go to fit it. By this time I've 
don a little research and found out about the specific model, downloaded the 
manual, read the relevant sections etc. I open up the back of the laptop and 
I'm expecting to see two mismatched SODIMMs to give the odd amount, but 
instead I see only one 512Mb SODIMM. I take out the RAM module and add in 
the two new modules to give a total of 1GB Ram.

  I replace the cover and switch on the laptop. Nothing happens, I can just 
hear faintly the hard drive whining, but the screen stays blank. No beeps or 
even an ASUS welcome screen, just a totally black screen. I try turning it 
on and off several times but with no response. So I then replace the 
original RAM and try it again, and still get nothing.

     So I'm asking the forum if they have any experience of a situation like 
this?  I've got quite a lot of experience building desktop systems, so I'm 
fairly sure I've not make a elementary mistake (static, wrong type of memory 
etc), but this is only the third laptop I've upgraded, so I'm wondering have 
I made a stupid mistake of a type only know the secret brotherhood of laptop 
techs?

My theory is that there was some sort of bad connection or soldering between 
the SODIMM socket and the motherboard which was why the system was showing 
383Mb instead of 512Mb, and when I removed the old SODIMM and fitted the new 
ones that was the straw that broke the camels back and completely broke the 
connection. Is this likely?

The laptop is only 6 months old so I phoned ASUS tech support, and they didn't 
even try to talk me through any fix but told me they would email me some 
forms to sort out a pick up and return. I'm still waiting for the email 
after 3 days, but I'm ring again after the weekend.

So my two questions are;

(1) Any thoughts on what killed the laptop? I'd like to be able to tell my 
uncle it wasn't my fault J

(2)Does anyone know any tricks I could try before I sent it back? Did I push 
the SODIMMs in far enough?

Thanks in advance

Tom

Grinder01

> So my two questions are;
> 
> (1) Any thoughts on what killed the laptop? I'd like to be able to tell
> my uncle it wasn't my fault J
> 
> (2)Does anyone know any tricks I could try before I sent it back? Did I
> push the SODIMMs in far enough?
> 
> Thanks in advance
> 
> Tom
> 
> Grinder01

1. Try the ram in another laptop, if it works then it is good.
2. make sure the ram is seated properly, sometimes you have to put some 
pressure on them to make them seat properly, make sure to not break the 
ram.

I had a laptop that display the black screen after I installed ram, it 
was because it wasn't seated properly. The mem config is probably due to 
the ram being shared with the video.

Thanks
Jonathan

"grinder01" <grinder01@btinternet.com> wrote in message 
news:5vGdnTqzN88s41bbnZ2dnUVZ8sPinZ2d@bt.com...
>I have a problem with an ASUS A9RP laptop running Vista Basic that I was 
>asked to look at by my uncle. At first it was taking a VERY (1/2 hour) long 
>time to boot. I took a brief look at the system properties and noticed that 
>it was only running on 383Mb (Three Hundred and Eighty Three) of RAM 
>instead of the factory spec of 512Mb. If I hadn't be so tired from fishing 
>all day I should of realised something was wrong there and then as that was 
>an odd amount of RAM L I suggested a RAM upgrade to 1Gb to start with, and 
>he ordered the RAM right then online from Crucial.
>  A few days later the memory arrives, and I go to fit it. By this time 
> I've don a little research and found out about the specific model, 
> downloaded the manual, read the relevant sections etc. I open up the back 
> of the laptop and I'm expecting to see two mismatched SODIMMs to give the 
> odd amount, but instead I see only one 512Mb SODIMM. I take out the RAM 
> module and add in the two new modules to give a total of 1GB Ram.
>
>  I replace the cover and switch on the laptop. Nothing happens, I can just 
> hear faintly the hard drive whining, but the screen stays blank. No beeps 
> or even an ASUS welcome screen, just a totally black screen. I try turning 
> it on and off several times but with no response. So I then replace the 
> original RAM and try it again, and still get nothing.
>
>     So I'm asking the forum if they have any experience of a situation 
> like this?  I've got quite a lot of experience building desktop systems, 
> so I'm fairly sure I've not make a elementary mistake (static, wrong type 
> of memory etc), but this is only the third laptop I've upgraded, so I'm 
> wondering have I made a stupid mistake of a type only know the secret 
> brotherhood of laptop techs?
>
> My theory is that there was some sort of bad connection or soldering 
> between the SODIMM socket and the motherboard which was why the system was 
> showing 383Mb instead of 512Mb, and when I removed the old SODIMM and 
> fitted the new ones that was the straw that broke the camels back and 
> completely broke the connection. Is this likely?
>
> The laptop is only 6 months old so I phoned ASUS tech support, and they 
> didn't even try to talk me through any fix but told me they would email me 
> some forms to sort out a pick up and return. I'm still waiting for the 
> email after 3 days, but I'm ring again after the weekend.
>
> So my two questions are;
>
> (1) Any thoughts on what killed the laptop? I'd like to be able to tell my 
> uncle it wasn't my fault J
>
> (2)Does anyone know any tricks I could try before I sent it back? Did I 
> push the SODIMMs in far enough?
    My Toshiba, I had same problem.  You've got it!  My ram had to be pushed 
in harder/further than what I first thought.  It went in far enough to 
almost hide the pins!  HTH,  sam