Ram upgrade to 8Mb on Thinkpad x201. Critical Ram size?

shoijer · Sep 29, 2014

I recently got an refurbished x201 with 4 Mb ram. I could not get it runnng on 8 Mb, will not boot (just shows Starting Windows on a Win 7 64bit OS). Found a lot of info when googling, but no answers. Finally I found a small note on the Lenovo homepage. Can the problem be I was using 1*8Mb Ram, not 2*4Mb? Is this a known problem? Is there a solution (except changing RAMs)
I tried 4+2GB (that I had available),even if they were not identical speeds, and amazingly it worked)

Chicano · Sep 29, 2014

That may be the problem... your computer supports 8GB maximum RAM distributed in two 4GB max slots.. this means a 8GB Module may be recognized as 4GB only, or more likely, it may not work at all.

shoijer · Sep 30, 2014

Chicano :

shoijer · Sep 30, 2014

OK, Chicano, thank you so much! This may well be the reason that upgrades to 8Mb may fail (4+4 is NOT equal to a single 8 when it comes to computers, at least not always!).
I still find it strange that the Windows boot just crashes (as the bios recognizes the 8 Mb). Hope this can help others struggling with upgrades

Chicano · Sep 30, 2014

shoijer :

I in turn find it quite obvious... As you well know, any computer needs RAM to start posting, then loading the boot process to memory... and if finds a RAM error and can't load the boot process, and you did not access the BIOS to change settings, the next thing to do is crash. It may not crash if you access the BIOS but I doub't there is anything you can do there... one thing is for sure.. If the 8GB stick were to work, it would mean so would another stick for a total of 16GB which would contradict the fact that your computer only supports the maximum of 8GB or 4GB per slot.

Search

Ram upgrade to 8Mb on Thinkpad x201. Critical Ram size?

shoijer

Reputable

Chicano

Chicano

Judicious

shoijer

Reputable

shoijer

Reputable

Chicano

Judicious

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page