Toshiba Satellite Pro 4270 RAM Problem?

[Robin997]

hello:

i have a toshiba satelite pro 4270 laptop, and am having a few problems with the ram. i bought it off ebay and the ram was listed as 192mb. when i recived the laptop, it only showed up as 64mb. when i went on the laptop the next day, the ram was shown as 192mb, shortly afterwerd i got a bsod, then a "stack dump" error or something of the sort. The day after i decided to install xp, as the ram had shown up as 192mb (which is enough to run xp). I installed xp and it ran very laggy and slow, and when i went to "system" the ram showed up as 64mb.
can any one post a link to a recent SIS Savage I/X driver, because the graphical performance, and the clearness in which xp is displayed is attrocious!

Can anyone give me an answer as to why this is happening, could it be a ram problem or motherboard problem?

 

[lamo]

there are problems with some old toshiba laptops, connected with bad soldering of memory slots. you can try to clean memory module. also, you can check the soldering of memory slots.

 

[Robin997]

ah, right. I find now that the ram sometimes comes up as 64mb, then other times 192mb. When the laptop shows 192mb, like i said this is shortly followed by random restarts, or a bsod. Could it be that one of the memory moules is faulty, which is making the laptop go crazy do you think?
btw what does the word "soldering" mean?

 

[lamo]

bad soldering=bad contacts between memory slot and motherboard. and as i said it can be dirty contacs of the memory module.

 

[raybay]

This error is usually in the hardware. If the memory was defective, it likely shouldn't boot, but that appears to be the problem. But eBay memory pushed up the suspicion index. Are you certain you have the correct memory? or that the memory is correctly labeled. There are no 192MB modules I know of that will fit a Toshiba laptop... should be either 128 mb or 256 mb. If they sold it to you as 192mb, you bought a pig in a poke.
I don't find a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 in my repair manual. Please give us the full model name from the bottom of the laptop.

 

[Robin997]

-the laptop is a toshiba satellite pro 4270

as i said before, sometimes the laptop shows 192mb of ram in system properties, and sometimes it shows 64mb. I loaded up everest home edition, to find that there was 3x64mb sticks of ram in the laptop.
also as i said earlier, when the laptop shows 192mb of ram, the laptop will frequently crash, restart, complain about memory stack dumps and things like that.
today i removed a stick of ram from the back of the laptop, so now system properties states the laptop has 64mb of ram, and xp runs increadibly slow, but without the random restarts and bluescreens.
so far so good anyway, but xp simply can' run with 64mb of ram.

 

[raybay]

Either your memory is bad, or your system board is bad... or more likely, you have the incorrect memory. Your system spec are: Bus Architecture: PCI
CPU Type: Intel Mobile Pentium III, Intel Celeron
Standard Memory: 64 MB (non-removable)
Maximum Memory: 320 MB
Memory Expansion: 2 sockets
Memory accepted: PC100 SDRAM SODIMMs
You should be able to use ONLY 1 modules of PC100 SDRAM not to exceed 128 MB each... then with the onboard memory which cannot be removed, you will have 320 MB.
If you are using larger modules, or PC-133, this could be the cause of your trouble, depending on whether it is low density or high density memory. Incorrect memory modules will cause this mis-reporting of what is installed.
Note that when you change things around, all it is reading is the unremovable on-board memory.
Use Windows 98SE instead of Windows XP if you want to get satisfactory use out of that computer.
You likely have incorrect memory installed... which you can get at www.kahlon.com cheap.

 

[Robin997]

a few hours ago, i opened up a hatch on the bottom of the laptop, and reinserted the PC100 RAM stick in the other of the two RAM slots, and made sure the RAM was sat in place securely. For some reason one of the metal latches on the other DIMM seamed to be slightly bent, so the ram moved about slightly. The RAM was in the DIMM i have just mentioned when i was getting the problems where the laptop was sometimes detecting 64mb and sometimes 192mb.

i am pretty sure i'm using the correct memory, because if i wasn't then surely the laptop would instead fail to boot correctly.



i will find out if the RAM is PC100 or PC133

 

[raybay]

PC-100 and PC-133 will both fit, but PC-133 will give errors in some Toshiba units.
What you have is one module, correct? That may be a 128 MB module, or two 64 MB modules.
This could mean that you have two 64 MB modules, and one is intermittently not being read. Your 64 MB is onboard, then it is detecting either one of two 64 mb Modules. Or you have one 128 MB module that is working intermittently. (128+64 equals 192) or (64 + 64 +64 on-board).
Now tell us your configuration, as to how many modules.
If it is one 128 MB module, it is working intermittently, or the slot is bad.

 

[Robin997]

My memory configuration is:
64mb onboard+1X128mb stick (which is PC100)
I think that one of the two memory slot's clips are slightly bend, because on one of the dimms the RAM seems to move about little, that is the DIMM which the RAM was origionally in when i had the problems.
The other DIMM has plastic clip's and i have inserted the ram into that DIMM, and the RAM seems to work fine in that slot.

I know that this question is a little off the subject of RAM, but do you know where i can find the latest graphics driver for the onboard graphics chip which is
SIS Savage I/X 8mb, basically because the laptop has a 13" screen and the only option available for the screen resolution is 800X600, which display's xp very large and clusy looking and jagged, or do you know any other way i can somehow set the resolution to 1024X768?

thanks for your help so far!

 

[raybay]

Use two 128 mb PC 100 modules and your problem will go away.

No need to fix the video until you get the memory fixed, because the video memory comes off the physical memory. Once you have memory, the drivers will work.
Your real problem is in using WXP when it is designed for W98SE, then not giving it the resources it needs. Alternately Windows 2000 professional will work.
Your computer NEEDs all 320 MB of memory to run WXP AND the video graphics... The numbers you quote for memory to run WXP come from the days before SP1... SP1 requires more memory. SP2 requires a lot more, and will continue to give you trouble even with 320 MB.
I haven't checked to see the maximum resolution of the screen, but I doubt you will find 1024 X 768 because it is a W98 machine which worked fine with 800 X 600.
If the screen hardware will handle it, there is a version of the Savage 8mb that will work on that video graphics at 1024 X 768... I suspect it is a hard ware issue, but will check my Toshiba repair manual.
I you are not interested in upgrading the memory to more than 192, this topic is closed as far as I am concerned.

 

[Robin997]

I can assure you that my memory problem is fixed now. The Memory module is PC-100, that's what it was recognised as in everest home edition. I do plan to upgrade the memory to 320mb, as the laptop simply cannot handly xp, never mind anitvirus software.
yes i know that 800x600 works "fine" on windows 98 and xp, but i am really not fond of the really large resolution, even though the screen is only 13". There is not enough workspace, and not enough room to display web pages. Do you know where i can find the version of savage 8mb which will work on 1024X768?

 

[raybay]

There is not one for the Toshiba WXP. There is one for the WMe and W98. You might start with www.driverguide.com, and they have some reported to work... then search for other driver sites. These people try all, until they get some to work, then edit the driver to release it.