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Pro tip: Overheard a guy at the parts counter say he fixed a weird boot loop by swapping the RAM sticks into different slots.
I always thought that was just an old wives' tale for desktop PCs. He was talking about a specific 2018 Dell laptop that would only get to the logo screen. After cleaning and reseating the RAM did nothing, he just moved the single stick from slot A to slot B. It posted on the first try. I tried it this week on an HP with a similar hang, and it actually worked. I guess some boards have a real picky primary slot. Has anyone else seen this fix work on newer machines, or was it just luck?
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paulc931mo ago
Man, I feel like half my troubleshooting is just me pretending I know what I'm doing and getting lucky. Tried that RAM swap thing once on my own laptop and it booted right up, so now I just assume every weird computer issue is actually a RAM slot conspiracy.
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ross.jason1mo ago
@paulc93 That "RAM slot conspiracy" idea is not as crazy as it sounds. I've seen more dead slots than bad sticks in old laptops. Reseating is basically magic.
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claire9921mo ago
Oh, you are speaking my language. I once spent three hours reinstalling drivers and scanning for viruses on my old Dell, and it turned out moving the RAM stick from the left slot to the right slot fixed everything. Now I swear by that trick. Any time a laptop acts up, I just pop the panel off, wiggle the sticks around, and nine times out of ten it wakes right up. Makes me wonder how many perfectly good computers get thrown away just because of a loose connection.
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