Broken RAM DIMM Slot

Founder_film · 11 Jul 2006 at 12:35

Hi

A while back I managed to slip with my screw driver whilst reinstalling my Aero 7 cooler onto my Athlon XP 2500+. When I slipped I hit one of my RAM DIMM slots, not sure which one as it was pretty fast.

The problem is now one of the DIMM slots doesnt work which means I cant run dual channel memory. My mobo has 4 slots in total (2 pairs). I have two sticks of 256Mb.

So it my mobo completely busted or is there a way of fixing the slot (once found which is faulty)? Do you think I have broken a link or resistor going to the slot?

Any help would be great. Thanks.

Meaker · 11 Jul 2006 at 12:44

This thead is useless without pics. It could be ANYTHING

pcAnywhere · 11 Jul 2006 at 13:43

Pictures would seriously help..

But if you've only trashed one of the four slots then you should still be OK. Dual channel memory can use either of the dual channels (1+3 or 2+4 etc) so you should still have 2 fully working RAM slots..

Founder_film · 11 Jul 2006 at 15:10

Yeah sorry about the lack of photos, I am going to have another investigation tonight and take some photos and upload them if I can.

See you would have thought I could use the "other" channel for dual channel memory to work, but I think it always needed the broken slot to work.

I will take a look when I get home and try and sort it out once an for all. Should have some pics too.

Rokusho · 11 Jul 2006 at 15:14

I doubt that it will need to use that slot, if you have 4, your pretty much guaranteed to have two ways of runnign dual channel.

Like it has been mentioned before slots 1&3 or 2&4, unless you broke something different, other than the RAM slots.

Founder_film · 11 Jul 2006 at 16:53

just looked at the manual and I could use the other slot, but if I do I have to use a Double Sided stick of ram and my 256's are only single sided so I think thats why it doesnt work.

I seem to remember DIMM 3 being the one that doesnt work.

See below (SS = Single Sided and DS = Double Sided):

DIMM 1 DIMM 2 DIMM 3 DIMM 4
DS/SS X DS/SS X
X DS/SS DS/SS X
DS/SS X X DS
X DS/SS X DS

Its a bit of a carp table hopefully you can see what I am getting at.

I think I am screwed

Founder_film · 11 Jul 2006 at 19:24

Right had a look at the motherboard and I cannot see any sign of damage around the RAM slots. So I am stumped, no idea why it stopped working.

Gimpmaster3201 · 11 Jul 2006 at 19:48

Founder_film said:
Right had a look at the motherboard and I cannot see any sign of damage around the RAM slots. So I am stumped, no idea why it stopped working.

It could be that you may have misaligned one of the pins in the RAM slot itself, especially if you were using a small flat headed screw driver. You could also have a look in the slots themselves for any small pieces of plastic which may be lodged in there and stopping contact.

Founder_film · 11 Jul 2006 at 22:52

Gimpmaster3201 said:
It could be that you may have misaligned one of the pins in the RAM slot itself, especially if you were using a small flat headed screw driver. You could also have a look in the slots themselves for any small pieces of plastic which may be lodged in there and stopping contact.

Right I had a closer look and I did not really see any plastic covering any of the contacts, I had a quick fiddle and tried putting a ram stick in DIMM 3, but this time I got a long load beeping from the motherboard speaker which I assume means the DIMM slot is causing an error.

So I fiddle around and try the ram in differnt slots and dont get a total of 512Mb of ram. So I gave up and put the two stick back in the right DIMM slots only now I get a NTFS corruption error! Rats! I think I must have screwed something on my HD now, which sucks! Is it a case of buying a HD? Well in fact it might be the case of upgrading everything hey.