Memory Slot Failure

Anyone had this happen?

[mipapage]

Hey All,

My girlfriend's P3 laptop has been working great for years on 256mb of Ram. The other day tho, it seems that one of the expansion slots failed and she's down to a very slow 128mb.

We tested it all and it seems that one of the expansion slots just isn't picking up the memory when it's there.

Anyone run into this before? We're not getting it repaired, I'll likely just buy a stick of 256k for the single slot, but I thought someone might have some great stick of wisdom...

I have searched "the interweb", but no luck...

fwiw - it's an (noisy) hp n5250 pavilion

[duckhunter]

Make sure the slot is clean. Blow out any dust that may have accumulated. I run alot of PCs in a dusty warehouse situation and seems like dust is fatal to slots on a motherboard. Usually, once it goes for me, it's gone. Something seems to short out in the hardwires.

[defanjos]

Very good advice from duckhunter.

You can go further and clean the contacts in the memory sticks with a cotton cloth and alcohol.
Ground yourself first.

[mipapage]

Thanks you two, I'll give it a shot. We've already orderd the new stick, but 384's better than 256!

and I treated myself to some extra megs as well!