Only showing 1.99GB usable

[Joseph]

Hi all,

 

I am having a pretty common problem but the usual suspects aren't solving it for me, hoping for some input

 

I have a friends Alienware Aurora here, it was having issues with CPU temp so I took apart, cleaned and reapplied paste and is working fine now. Unfortunately around the same time it got a problem with the ram, only 1.99 of 6GB is showing as usable. The rest is coming up as hardware reserved.

 

- It is not the ram sticks as I have tried each one on its own and works fine

- There are 6 slots: only 1 slot appears to be working. ie if I am inserting just one stick it will only work in the far right hand slot

- If I change the ram to the other color slots it does not boot at all, gives error beeps

- Maximum memory box is unchecked

 

Is this a faulty motherboard?

 

 

Cheers!

 

Joseph

[blknight88]

Did you try resetting CMOS?

 

Also is there a bios update available?

[Wiz Khalifa]

It is recognizing the memory right? Have you tried using one DIMM in each one? What happens when you put the RAM in one of the slots besides the one you said was working?

[Loe]

What OS do you have?

[Wiz Khalifa]

Sorry, I didn't read it fully :unsure: . I think your motherboard is faulty. If it doesn't boot at all, it definitely isn't an OS problem. I figure that it turns on for about 3 seconds with a black screen then it shuts off. You don't see the BIOS screen right?

[Joseph]

Hi guys

 

Thanks for the replies!

 

I was fairly sure it was the motherboard, but it turned out that he opted for the extended warranty so Dell is going to replace the motherboard for free which is grand

 

Thanks again

 

Joseph

[TheCanadianGeek]

You changed the paste and then it didn't saw the 6 GB of ram? Or it always did this?