Hi,

I am upgrading my four-year-old Sony Viao PCG FR415S laptop from 2x256MB of memory to 2x512MB of memory. The laptop has never been touched inside prior to this since new. After much contact with various leading memory providers including Sony, Crucial, Kingston, etc., I know I can upgrade to 1GB safely and that I have the correct sticks.

However, after painstakingly careful installation of the two new sticks my Windows XP SP2 does not appear to recognise them as the Operating System will not load at all. Confusingly, in the new 1GB configuration the BIOS shows 448MB of RAM (I think this figure has remained the same from when it had 512MB of RAM installed).

Can anyone please tell me what I should do to upgrade to the full 1GB spec?

The old sticks each state: 256MB DDR 266 CL2

The brand new sticks each state: 512MB DDR SODIMM PC2100 266MHz

All memory websites confirm the new sticks are the correct ones.

Many thanks,

di4charles

Hello there and welcome to PCHelpForum.

If you do not experience any beep error codes on startup try resetting BIOS.

Either remove BIOS battery for 2 two minutes or locate the BIOS reset jumper.4 pins located possibly near BIOS battery with a little plastic jumper located on two of the pins.Remove jumper and place on the two empty pins for two minutes then replace back on origonal pins.

I have marked your thread as "Open" so you can receive further help with this.

JB.

Quick query:
So if you put back the original memory does it work now?

Thank you for your help to date. I looked again at the Sony website and found and then followed their installation instructions to the letter. Interestingly, at the end of their instruction, they state that the upgrade may not be recognised and that the remedy is re-installation!

First I reinstalled the original memory and yes, it started without a problem. On reinstalling the new memory Windows XP boots without obvious problems.

However, both the BIOS and Task Manager still show 512MB of RAM!

Perplexed, I downloaded SandraLite from www.sisoftware.co.uk and ran the laptops specification. It shows I have two 256MB 133MHz (should be two 512MB 266MHz) sticks installed!!!!!!!!!!

So, I carefully checked what I purchased and can confirm that I purchased the correct sticks as specified in my first post, and that the only ID on each of the new sticks, eBuyer's Quick Find Code, is a match.

Can eBuyer really have sent me the wrong spec despite their labels' Quick Find Codes matching with the correctly ordered sticks? I find it hard to believe SandraLite is wrong.

I will try resetting the BIOS but without any other course of action I think I must, through no fault of my own, have the wrong sticks.

Me too...but to be on the safe side, download and run this: ASTRA32 - Advanced System Information Tool - Free Download then post back your findings.

The moral of this tale is quite simple. If a memory stick has '266' printed on it, do not assume it is the MHz! It could just as easily be a product code as it proved to be in this case.

Thank you all for your help. My laptop is now operating superbly.

That is brilliant.

I am glad it is up and running now.

JB.