Laptop memory issue

Wifey has an HP laptop, Athlon 2500+ or so. I purchased 1 Gb of RAM (Crucial Value Select). I put them in , nothing. It boots, runs 2 seconds or so, reboots, repeats 4 or 5 times, then boots up but gives me nothing.

One old stick with one new boots fine.

I haven't played much with verifying both sticks are good, as I had them in and out and all over the place, but that's my first point of attack. Any other suggestions?

me

Does it fail when it gets to Windows or can you boot to the BIOS? This might be a bad stick from the description or maybe even a faulty battery since thats often caused stability issues on my Turion. Try running memtest to at least knock out the memory issue. But yeah, verify that the sticks match in latency, timings and speed and then check for errors.

They don't really do BIOS updates for laptops. And this is HP we're talking about..

HP Laptop BIOS update guide.

Sometimes us old guys like to teach you young hotshots something...

hence the thumb damage...?

Component specs change over time even in the product lifetime of a laptop. They need the flexibility. Power management can also improve with the updates. Consumer may be a bit different but certainly the corporate brands normally do have an update facility.

Might be one to watch out for on Vista laptop issues...