Bad Memory!! need help?

Question

i have a Sharp notebook.. mod. pc-rd10 and i have an issue... i want to install vista or win7 or the upcoming win8 on my laptop but i have a memory issue... i have a total of 768mb of ram but 256 of that is onboard mem.. the other 512 is seperate. the 256onboard is bad or at least a section is.. i have heard of desodering it or simply cutting it off but i dont wont to run the risk of damaging my computer. i cant afford to buy another one. but my dad was telling me that there might be a "scandisk" or mem. the concept of telling the computer to bypass or delete the bad sections of the ram. i get a ram error msg when i intall vista or win7 but i want to run them... can someone help me out.. i appreciate the help


_Andrew

Answer 1

Will not make any difference since Vista need a minimum of 1 gig free

Answer 2

Your father is thinking of the hard disk, and quite frankly, a lot of people get RAM memory and VIRTUAL memory (hard disk) mixed up. The RAM memory resides on sticks of physical RAM. Virtual memory resides on the hard disk and is dynamically allocated by Windows. There is no such thing as a program designed to tell the computer to ignore PHYSICAL RAM. NTFS file system management has pre-built functionality which automatically detects bad sectors of a HARD DISK and MARKS the bad sectors so they can be ignored. This is what your father is thinking about but he is confused about what is what.



How do you know that the RAM in your laptop is soldered in there? That may not be true at all. It may have a slot in which case, releasing the bad RAM module is just releasing the slot connectors. Very few computers have soldered RAM in them any more - years ago, that may have been the case, but if your computer is anything recent, it most likely does not have soldered RAM.



You need to open the laptop up and LOOK to see.



Check this blog out for how to open the laptop, and also, check the manufacturer site to see if there are instructions:



http://notebookrepairs.blogspot.com/2008/01/howto-open-laptop-notebook.html



BTW, desoldering doesn't apply very much heat except to the very immediate vicinity where the soldering takes place. So if the memory module is soldered, it should NOT damage the module. You take the hot soldering iron and just touch the tip of the metal retaining clip until the solder becomes liquid and then release the module. It won't hurt anything.



You could buy another GOOD module to replace the bad one and a tiny amount of solder would do it. You have to practice a bit, but you will get the hang of it soon enough. Just keep the tip of the soldering iron on the immediate retainer clip and no damage will be done. If soldered memory was damaged by doing the soldering, none of it would survive, right? Make sure you do not use a regular electrical soldering iron. Get an electronic soldering one, a basic one from Radio Shack costs $10.

Answer 3

You and your dad are totally confused you need to talk to some one who knows about computers. You can't just install the latest O/S on any computer especially laptops because the drivers will not be available since laptops often use customized hardware, even if the name of the hardware is similar to something else