[SOLVED] Upgraded RAM, now my laptop has side effects.

Jun 24, 2021
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So, I have a Dell G5 5505 Gaming laptop, which I use for just that, gaming. I decided to start experementing with it here and there, and decided to try and upgrade my RAM. I used Crucial's tool to determine what type I needed, and how much I could add. I bought the memory sticks it recommended, upgrading from two 4GB sticks to two 16 GB sticks(the max Crucial said my motherboard could add).

The instalation prosses did not go well. I took the old out, put the new in, and the OS wouldn't load. I would up having to reset the laptop(not too big of a deal, as most of my games are on a SSD card I'm using) after trying to get it to work by putting the old memory sticks back in. After the reset, it worked fine, and for some reason, I decided to try again, and it worked. OS booted, no problem.

So, now the laptop works, plays my games just fine, but now every about 5 times I boot up the laptop, the OS fails to load, but works fine after being restarted. Also, and this is something I had previously attributed to Mcafee giving me a new free trial with the restart, the laptop has been freezing for about 4-10 seconds randomly. There doesn't seem to be a correlation with the games, as it does this even when I'm not playing anything. Exept just now it froze again, and this time it didn't unfreeze itself. I waited about 5 minutes for it to respond, and restarted. The OS failed to boot,, so I restarted, and it's working again.

It may be working for now, but I'm worried I may have started something that will toaster my laptop in the near future. Any helpful tips or advice? Any idea what I may have accidentally done to break something? Any and all help would be greatly appriciated!
 
Solution
Did you remove the battery before messing with the ram? If not, that's probably the issue. I would also run memtest86 on both the old and new ram and see if you run into any errors indicating memory damage or motherboard damage.
So, I have a Dell G5 5505 Gaming laptop, which I use for just that, gaming. I decided to start experementing with it here and there, and decided to try and upgrade my RAM. I used Crucial's tool to determine what type I needed, and how much I could add. I bought the memory sticks it recommended, upgrading from two 4GB sticks to two 16 GB sticks(the max Crucial said my motherboard could add).

The instalation prosses did not go well. I took the old out, put the new in, and the OS wouldn't load. I would up having to reset the laptop(not too big of a deal, as most of my games are on a SSD card I'm using) after trying to get it to work by putting the old memory sticks back in. After the reset, it worked fine, and for some reason, I decided to try again, and it worked. OS booted, no problem.

So, now the laptop works, plays my games just fine, but now every about 5 times I boot up the laptop, the OS fails to load, but works fine after being restarted. Also, and this is something I had previously attributed to Mcafee giving me a new free trial with the restart, the laptop has been freezing for about 4-10 seconds randomly. There doesn't seem to be a correlation with the games, as it does this even when I'm not playing anything. Exept just now it froze again, and this time it didn't unfreeze itself. I waited about 5 minutes for it to respond, and restarted. The OS failed to boot,, so I restarted, and it's working again.

It may be working for now, but I'm worried I may have started something that will toaster my laptop in the near future. Any helpful tips or advice? Any idea what I may have accidentally done to break something? Any and all help would be greatly appriciated!
Get rid of all McAfee crap, as it is now it's malware !!!
Try with Malwarebytes https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/thankyou
and
Adwcleaner https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner
 
Jun 24, 2021
3
0
10
Get rid of all McAfee crap, as it is now it's malware !!!
Try with Malwarebytes https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/thankyou
and
Adwcleaner https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner
Got rid of it, and am now using Malwarebytes! Thanks for the help!




Did you remove the battery before messing with the ram? If not, that's probably the issue. I would also run memtest86 on both the old and new ram and see if you run into any errors indicating memory damage or motherboard damage.

Uh, yeah, that would be the problem. I did try to remove it, but the screwdriver I was working with wasn't going to cut it, so I decided to just replace it without removing the battery. On a scale of one to ten, am I toastered? Can this be fixed?
 
Uh, yeah, that would be the problem. I did try to remove it, but the screwdriver I was working with wasn't going to cut it, so I decided to just replace it without removing the battery. On a scale of one to ten, am I toastered? Can this be fixed?
Bummer. You really need to either drain the system completely and make sure the battery is completely dead before touching the ram again. Seriously--don't touch it if there is a drop of power running to it. Press the power button numerous times and make sure the thing doesn't turn on. You can remove the battery to make this easier, but you can just run it down as well.

Run memtest86 on both your old and new modules. You're basically looking for any errors and any consistent errors (errors in the same spot). If you have no errors, then it's a intermittent issue that as you guessed will probably get worse with age. If you get errors on just one module or set of modules, then it is probably just that module that was damaged. If you have a certain address space that always seems to have errors, then that points to damage to the motherboard, which is a big operation on a laptop. :(
 
Jun 24, 2021
3
0
10
Bummer. You really need to either drain the system completely and make sure the battery is completely dead before touching the ram again. Seriously--don't touch it if there is a drop of power running to it. Press the power button numerous times and make sure the thing doesn't turn on. You can remove the battery to make this easier, but you can just run it down as well.

Run memtest86 on both your old and new modules. You're basically looking for any errors and any consistent errors (errors in the same spot). If you have no errors, then it's a intermittent issue that as you guessed will probably get worse with age. If you get errors on just one module or set of modules, then it is probably just that module that was damaged. If you have a certain address space that always seems to have errors, then that points to damage to the motherboard, which is a big operation on a laptop. :(

OK, well, I guess now I know just how important that step is! I'm going to be taking a trip to the hardware store early next week to get the tool I needed to remove the battery, so I will run memtest then, and we'll see how it goes.

Thank you so much for all your help! I think I'll be sticking around on the forums, I think I can learn a lot from here!