Is it possible to fix laptop memory slot failure with a guitar pick? Yes, it is. You will not fix the memory slot itself, but you can work around the problem. 
Today I received a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 laptop with the following complaint:
The laptop starts and works properly, but recognizes only one of the two memory modules installed. The laptop has two 256MB RAM modules installed, but registers only 256MB.
First of all, I removed the memory cover to find out if both memory modules are installed correctly. The laptop had two 256MB Kingston modules installed and they were seated properly.
When I started the laptop and entered the BIOS setup menu, I found that only one of the two memory modules is detected and the laptop registers only 256MB (262144KB) of RAM instead of 512MB (524288KB).
Just a side note. In the computer world 1MB=1024KB. That’s why 256MB=262144KB and 512MB=524288KB.
I tried reseating both memory modules but it didn’t help.
After that I tried installing both memory modules in both memory slots one by one and here’s what I found. The laptop worked absolutely fine when both memory modules were installed into the slot A, but failed to boot with both memory modules installed into the slot B.
Apparently, there is nothing wrong with the memory modules and the laptop has a faulty memory slot B. The memory slot is permanently soldered on the motherboard. If one of the slots fails you’ll have to replace the whole motherboard or use the laptop with only one working slot.
Buying a new motherboard for this older laptop wouldn’t make any sense because it’s too expensive, but the laptop is still in a good working condition except the faulty memory slot B, so I continued playing with that trying to find the solution.
I noticed that the laptop start normally with the memory module installed into the faulty slot if I slightly press on the module with my thumb. And this gave me an idea.
This guitar pick is going to fix my laptop.
I installed both RAM modules back into the slots and then placed the guitar pick over the module in the slot B as it shown on the picture.
I thought if I close the RAM door it will press on the guitar pick/memory module and it will have the same effect as pressing on the module with my thumb. And it worked!
Both memory modules were detected properly and the laptop registered all 512MB. After “the fix” I tested memory with Memtest86+ and the laptop passed the test.
I wouldn’t call it the best solution for fixing a faulty memory slot but in some cases it will work.
By the way, I didn’t charge the customer for this “repair”, he knows what is going on and how I “fixed” his problem.
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March 1st, 2008 at 9:33 am
I need info on taking apart a Gateway MX6440 notebook. Please tell me where I can find this information.
Mary Kay
March 1st, 2008 at 10:52 am
Mary,
You can find more some help here:
Replacing memory, hard drive, keyboard on Gateway laptops
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Had office depot techs destroy a SIMM slot on a P1 overdrive machine and they taped the SIMM memory stick into the slot using masking tape a few years back.
This is what that reminds me of.
Mind you, over time the solder joint will go, but hey. The next tech to look at it is going to have a serious WTF moment.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
TheKookie,
Before I “fixed” the memory slot I talked to my customer and explained that he has three options:
1. Replace the whole motherboard and this option will cost him a few hundred dollars
2. Use the laptop as is with only one good memory slot
3. Use the laptop with my fix and see how long it last (by the way, I didn’t charge him for this repair).
He decided to go with the option 3.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Here’s a good one.
Had a laptop with memory that was *perfectly* loose; you smack the machine, it start failing the memory test (windows memory diagnostic) HARD, then it goes back to normal. Smack it again, it f*cks up, then it’s ok.
So, I reseat the memory. Works fine. Smack smack smack, ok. Drop it an inch, hardlock and the screen goes blank. :O
Running it through a pcdoc 6 hdd test. Lets see if it hardlocks in pcdoc again.
I’m calling this the “Smack-test” in my logs and I’m going to see if management (who reads them daily) asks.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
cj2600. I agree wholeheartedly that the solution is a good one; I wasn’t accusing you of being a bad tech. I am highly entertained. The permanent best solution is to get a soldering iron with a very fine tip and go to town and charge the guy for the labor, but hey, that’s just me; I can be a greedy bastard.
What I’m saying is guy is probably going to sell the machine to get his money out of it upon sensing it is going and buy a new one, and when the thing fails again a year down the line, the next tech is going to open the laptop up, look inside, see a guitar pick stuck in a memory slot and since most aren’t as sharp enough to understand why it is there, blow a brain gasket
Or what’ll happen is it’ll fail and he’ll forget and take it to you again, who will not also remember, and will go WTF at your own quick-e-fix.
Ok, I’m going off the deep end into cluthulian insanity, can you blame me?
Now the REAL question is, what are you doing with a guitar pick at work man? Don’t you REALIZE? Music leads to dancing, and dancing leads to shenanigans! And bosses don’t like shenanigans!
*looks around, puts on headphones, starts disassembling something expensive with a hammer and a screwdriver*
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
What am I doing with a guitar pick at work? This is one of my main tools.
It’s very handy for opening laptop cases and display panels.
Take a look at some Toshiba laptop disassembly guides and you’ll see how I use my guitar pick.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Sounds like your employer doesn’t understand the wisdom in investing in tools.
I had one employer who had 2 botched test PSU’s in 2 seperate departments; the molex connectors came undone. Do we store-use or even borrow the $8 punch tool on the shelf?
Nope.
We replace both supplies and I make darned sure they’re both BTX so the same problem doesn’t happen again. $100 a pop.
I can see a certain wisdom and advantage over a good flathead of the right size (I bring 4 separate sets of screwdrivers to work) will do the trick and unless the customer is a complete ass they will never notice the microscopic indents.
*hopes this doesn’t turn into a nerd-war*
Hrm, now here’s a question. How bout a guide on dealing with warranty shops that don’t want to do the repairs?
March 6th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
TheKookie,
What do you mean don’t want to do the repair? If the laptop is still under warranty and it’s broken, they have to fix it. They will not repair the motherboard, just replace it with another one but who cares? If it works, it works.
I work for a warranty center and we do not repair parts under warranty, we just replace the whole part, even if it’s something simple like a broken power jack. Replace the whole damn board.
March 21st, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Hi I have a lapatop made by great quaility and would like to know how to take it apart as I have a bad vibration in the cd burmer
Can anyone tell me if they have ever had a noisy cd burner on a laptop it makes a vibrating sound
March 21st, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Luke,
First of all, test your DVD drive with different CDs and DVDs. Do you have vibration with all of them or with only one particular disc? It’s possible that your DVD drive is fine but the disc is bad.
If you have same problem (vibration) with different CDs and DVDs, there is something wrong with the DVD drive. In this case you’ll have to replace the drive.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:38 am
On the warranty thing.
I send a unit to HP; fails PCDoc 6 loadtest . Likes to slowly corrupt windows installs. Passes Proc/Mobo/Memory/Video/HDD.
They send it back with a bios update stating they could reproduce the issue.
Still fails PCDoc6 Load test.
I send it in again. They give me an estimate for $300 for a failed HDD; this is a move to blow me off. Now it passed a HDD test when it came back since I saw it comin’ and retested. I have a pretty good idea at this point it is a bad mobo. I use my contact, get them to repair it free of charge. They send it back stating they could reproduce the issue and fixed it. I *also* request they pull the HDD and just run a quick PCdoc 6 loadtest; same as what I have (I do a lot of HP, I’ve got all their tools so their shop reporduces what I find); they say “nope, no other problems, just a bad HDD”.
Still fails PCDoc6 Load test.
I do a full pull-apart diagnostic, test only mobo/mem/LCD/KB/Powerswitch, nothing else. Nada. 100% sure it’s a bad motherboard; I state as much in my request.
Send it in a 3rd Time, they state they could not reproduce the issue, then place an alpha version of a new bios with heat-related updates on it. Previous version of the bios also had heat-related updates to the fanbus algorithm.
Still fails PCDoc6.
They don’t want to replace it. The unit is 2 years out of manufacture and under warranty. They see the issue, they know its there, they just don’t want to fix it; they want to cover it up.
I’ve sent machines to warranty, had THEM spill soda and liquid damage, then return it. I don’t persue it any further; if on occasion they want to dump a bad unit on the retailer I work for I’m not opposed; everyone does it. If they dump a lot or just don’t fix a lot, that’s a problem.
Same as with instead of replacing a faulty dvd-rom drive they’ll ghost a new image of the recovery partition onto the unit. I test everything they send back since about 1/5 repairs is either spottily done or not done at all. Out of 150 warranty claims I’ve had one NTF from em’ in the last 11 months.
Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu; they all do it from time to time, some more than others There’s a mistake, then there’s incompetence, then there’s competent techs who’s bosses say “don’t replace any parts”. I’ve seen it done.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I have a question.
I want to upgrade to upgrade the memory in my Toshiba Satellite 1135-S125 from the original 256mb to 1gb. I talked to some guy at “laptopmemoryupgrade.com” and he said I’d have to use two sticks of 512mb instead of just a 1gb stick. I know this machine only can take a maximum of 1gb, but do I have to use two 512mb sticks? If so, it’s not really a huge problem, 512mb sticks of the PC2100 sodimm ram for it aren’t too hard to find, but I was just wondering.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Your a STAR
great thanks Soooooooo Much i thought my old faithful had packed up, but its like you said it picks up the slot-b with a bit of packaging of some type along the connector, i used foam rubber and works fine 512mb
November 26th, 2008 at 9:03 am
i have been having problem on my laptop over virus. I have instell diff. type of antivirus and still yet i am tried to download music video on my memory card or flash the virus on my system will distroy the video already inside the flash or memo. The avira antivirus i downloaded on it before was corrupted before i download another,when installing with be get to an extent and indicated “crc failed in basic\aecore.dll
unexpected end of archive”…..Pleasle what can i do to solve this problem. Thanks.
December 17th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Wow, this is so cool, thanks a lot man, I had the same problem and now it’s all fixed, though I used pieces of cardboard instead of guitar picks on my Dell
.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:50 am
OMG, I LOVE YOU MAN. This saved me from throwing away my laptop!!
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:31 am
Dude you rock!!! I was about to trash my laptop and buy a new one because I was frustrated with only one memory slot working, but this saved me. No guitar pick but I cut a piece of plastic out of an old dvd case and it worked just as well.
February 8th, 2009 at 8:16 am
I have same problem on Toshiba tecra 8100 and i resolv it inspecting all pins of the slot. I found 3 pins unstuck. After soldering all pins (for certainty) everything is O.K. and laptop work fine.
February 15th, 2009 at 11:32 am
your awesome!! my dell 5100 is working now, thanks for youre great advice, I’m happy thanks !!!!!!!!!!!!
February 16th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
WOW! You saved sooo many computers with you genius. I have been running mine for over a year due to this problem. NOW I KNOW!!!
February 18th, 2009 at 7:56 am
SWEEEEEEETTTTT ! ! !
Used this fix this morning! I used Q-tip’s instead… had to trim them of course… I thought my motherboard was a total loss….
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:45 am
I just had to post here, THANKS A TON MAN. I just got a Toshiba Portege 200 off of Ebay and it came with one 512MB module and I wanted to push it up to 1GB since I dual-booted it with Vista. Went through the hassle of ordering online another 512 and having to return it once (it really was busted) just to realize that my slot was bad as well. I could have returned it and bought a 1GB module, but this saved me some cash and more hassle.
A guitar pick wouldn’t work for me, so I ended up just sticking half a plastic SD card case in there to keep it pushed down and it works like a charm. I’m still a bit worried about it messing something up overtime but so far no problems. Thanks for the advise.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:06 am
damn,i going to give that a try i have a toshiba terca 9000
it’s my favorite from the others which is less than 4 years olds
only one slot is working ran cpu -z the slot is there the memory is in the slot but it’s showing up as no ram ,you are just like yogi the bear said smarter than the average bear
March 31st, 2009 at 5:57 pm
i tried it,man you are a freaking genius,all this time i been running
it with 256mb so slow with these newer programs on it ,i been troubleshooting computers for a while and never thought of that,back up to 512mbs this my home laptop can go to 1gb,five star site,i will tell others about this site for laptops if they email me,truly
a experience computer tech,note toshiba terca 9000
April 12th, 2009 at 8:19 am
good work.. what i think is that. the problem was from the memory slot teeth. it couldn`t have in contact with the memory teeth does why he use the guitar pick to press the memory into contact to the slot teeth.
April 12th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
richard,
You are 100% correct. When you apply pressure on the memory module, it makes a better connection with the memory slot. I used the guitar pick to push the memory module down so it makes connection with all contacts inside the slot.
May 25th, 2009 at 12:11 am
There are some heat conductive pads you can place on the memory modules of the chip. This would help dissipate heat and it has an adhesive side for permanent application to the chip. So, you wouldn’t have to worry about the pick coming loose and also the memory may run a little cooler. Cooler parts = Better performance. Great Article, thanks for the read.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Thanx so much! May God bless ur soul! I really thought my computer was fried until I found this. I used q-tips and some plastic anker kits. Works fine now. Thanx again!
July 24th, 2009 at 4:45 am
yes very glad to find this.
satellite p105,
it doesnt boot at all.
going thru yr memory slot thing. opened the memory.
the side of the slot (white plastic with tiny metal tab, “flange”. on one side of the top slot (there are 2 folded slots), has cracked and now spread doesnt clamp the module.
sure i could have done that when i spread the sides.
but i think i used so little pressure that it was already cracked.
either way, problem is the same.
but…i don’t know if this is the problem.
i have tried booting with and without 2 modules, change them from slots.
still no boot. but i will have to address this to move on, right?
your advice and comments have given me a few ideas of how to go.
however i’d really like your opinion about efficient procedure here. would really appreciate it.
i could just assume the good slot is ok. just use one module. and keep going. that deosnt seem right.
thanks in advance.
July 24th, 2009 at 4:47 am
one add+
i thought i was on track to find the inverter or backlight is bad. and i still think this is where i am headed with this. thanks.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:35 am
hey did i hear that static electricity builds up on speakers of some toshiba m35x laptops and that crashes the system
Mine was manufactured Jan 2005
I cant find a reason why it crashes or at times doenst even boot.
I check the system memory folder
and it give a number that doesnt exactly match the memory card installed either
thoughts?
September 1st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
steve micheals,
I cover this problem with Satellite M35X in this post.
Apparently part of the memory is used for video purposes and that’s why it doesn’t report the same amount of memory in properties.
September 6th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Clever idea and I do play the guitar so picks are i stock lol.
I’ve been repairing computers and building websites for 14+ years (lost track along time ago). I just wanted to tell you that in my opinion I honestly think your work and website is amazing for anyone needing computer help.
Most people don’t realize the time it takes to do something like you do overall and the fact that you picture and detail everything so much. I send customers to your website daily when they need help if you have a post for it.
Keep up the work,
Justin Basser
September 27th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Well I have a M45-s2692 which failed to boot up after the laptop hung and I had to power the laptop down. The power button would briefly light up and then it would shut off. Initially thought that the memory stick in the slot was bad but a new stick did not changed the problem. If any memory is in the second slot then the same thing happens.
Was able to get it to boot up once by applying pressure to the memory stick but have not been able to do so again. The laptop had its mainboard replaced last year because it would not boot up at all. This time I can only have one memory slot in use.
October 1st, 2009 at 6:24 pm
frustrated,
Sounds like the memory slot failure.
I guess you’ll have to either replace the motherboard or use it as is.
I wouldn’t recommend buying a new motherboard for this unit, it’s better to save money for a new laptop.