I have a problem with an ASUS A9RP laptop running Vista Basic that I was
asked to look at by my uncle. At first it was taking a VERY (1/2 hour) long
time to boot. I took a brief look at the system properties and noticed that
it was only running on 383Mb (Three Hundred and Eighty Three) of RAM instead
of the factory spec of 512Mb. If I hadn't be so tired from fishing all day I
should of realised something was wrong there and then as that was an odd
amount of RAM L I suggested a RAM upgrade to 1Gb to start with, and he
ordered the RAM right then online from Crucial.
A few days later the memory arrives, and I go to fit it. By this time I've
don a little research and found out about the specific model, downloaded the
manual, read the relevant sections etc. I open up the back of the laptop and
I'm expecting to see two mismatched SODIMMs to give the odd amount, but
instead I see only one 512Mb SODIMM. I take out the RAM module and add in
the two new modules to give a total of 1GB Ram.

I replace the cover and switch on the laptop. Nothing happens, I can just
hear faintly the hard drive whining, but the screen stays blank. No beeps or
even an ASUS welcome screen, just a totally black screen. I try turning it
on and off several times but with no response. So I then replace the
original RAM and try it again, and still get nothing.

So I'm asking the forum if they have any experience of a situation like
this? I've got quite a lot of experience building desktop systems, so I'm
fairly sure I've not make a elementary mistake (static, wrong type of memory
etc), but this is only the third laptop I've upgraded, so I'm wondering have
I made a stupid mistake of a type only know the secret brotherhood of laptop
techs?

My theory is that there was some sort of bad connection or soldering between
the SODIMM socket and the motherboard which was why the system was showing
383Mb instead of 512Mb, and when I removed the old SODIMM and fitted the new
ones that was the straw that broke the camels back and completely broke the
connection. Is this likely?

The laptop is only 6 months old so I phoned ASUS tech support, and they didn
't
even try to talk me through any fix but told me they would email me some
forms to sort out a pick up and return. I'm still waiting for the email
after 3 days, but I'm ring again after the weekend.

So my two questions are;

(1) Any thoughts on what killed the laptop? I'd like to be able to tell my
uncle it wasn't my fault J

(2)Does anyone know any tricks I could try before I sent it back? Did I push
the SODIMMs in far enough?

Thanks in advance

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