Memory recognition problems with Aspire T180

I've given up on Acer support (and I thought Asus and Abit were bad) after a
month of wasted with meaningless and very occasional responses from them and
in the hope that someone in this NG here can help.

A month ago I tried to upgrade the memory on a friend's Acer Aspire T180
Desktop from the installed 512Mb to 2.0Gb (running Vista Home Basic and
running like a snail) and the system is only recognising and reporting 1Gb
when two matching 1Gb memory modules are installed. Both are working
individually in what I presume is Slot 0 (my friend could not find her
manual and I could find no motherboard reference documents or manual on the
Acer Web Site)

Neither of the memory sticks will work individually in the other Slot (Slot
1 ?) and the system will not boot. However the system will recognise either
of the 1Gb modules in Slot 0 and the original 512 Mb in Slot 1 (reporting a
total of 1.5 Gb). The memory is OCZ PC2 4200 1024Mb DDR2 (Part No:
OCZ25331024V). Both memory modules have been checked as working on my own
system.

I cannot find any relevant info on the Acer site about this computer, or the
motherboard fitted, so has anyone out there met up with similar problems
with memory not being compatible with this motherboard/computer or a memory
limitation not being well publicised

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

Geoff

Some being by the name of Geoff managed to piece together the following:

Neither of the memory sticks will work individually in the other Slot
(Slot 1 ?) and the system will not boot. However the system will recognise
either of the 1Gb modules in Slot 0 and the original 512 Mb in Slot 1
(reporting a total of 1.5 Gb). The memory is OCZ PC2 4200 1024Mb DDR2
(Part No: OCZ25331024V). Both memory modules have been checked as working
on my own system.


Doesn't the T180 have 4 memory slots? I had a look on the Crucial site and
it says it'll take 4 x 1gb -
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/list...=Aspire%20T180

--
The trouble with women is that they never put the toilet seat back up!

"TGGA" wrote in message
. uk...
Some being by the name of Geoff managed to piece together the following:

Neither of the memory sticks will work individually in the other Slot
(Slot 1 ?) and the system will not boot. However the system will
recognise
either of the 1Gb modules in Slot 0 and the original 512 Mb in Slot 1
(reporting a total of 1.5 Gb). The memory is OCZ PC2 4200 1024Mb DDR2
(Part No: OCZ25331024V). Both memory modules have been checked as working
on my own system.


Doesn't the T180 have 4 memory slots? I had a look on the Crucial site and
it says it'll take 4 x 1gb -
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/list...=Aspire%20T180

--
The trouble with women is that they never put the toilet seat back up!


Agreed, I eventually managed to find and download the specs and manual (user
guide) from the Acer US site and the specs say 4Gb as well, but nothing as
to how that 4Gb is made up (ie 2 x 2Gb or 4 x 1Gb). There are four slots,
but looks to me as if two are DDR2 and the other two DDR (two distinct
colours). The manual is useless apart from telling you how to turn the
computer on, and the specs say nothing about DDR memory only DDR2; so will
have to check that out just in case they are both DDR2 and I should be using
one of the other memory slots.

Acer UK will not, or cannot, give me a straight answer as to what memory is
compatible with this board so I will have to try and identify the
motherboard and work from that.

Thanks

Geoff

On Sep 12, 7:56 am, "Geoff" wrote:
"TGGA" wrote in message

. uk...



Some being by the name of Geoff managed to piece together the following:

Neither of thememorysticks will work individually in the other Slot
(Slot 1 ?) and the system will not boot. However the system will
recognise
either of the 1Gb modules in Slot 0 and the original 512 Mb in Slot 1
(reporting a total of 1.5 Gb). Thememoryis OCZ PC2 4200 1024Mb DDR2
(Part No: OCZ25331024V). Bothmemorymodules have been checked as working
on my own system.

Doesn't theT180have 4memoryslots? I had a look on the Crucial site and
it says it'll take 4 x 1gb -
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/list...=Aspire%20T180

--
The trouble with women is that they never put the toilet seat back up!

Agreed, I eventually managed to find and download the specs and manual (user
guide) from theAcerUS site and the specs say 4Gb as well, but nothing as
to how that 4Gb is made up (ie 2 x 2Gb or 4 x 1Gb). There are four slots,
but looks to me as if two are DDR2 and the other two DDR (two distinct
colours). The manual is useless apart from telling you how to turn the
computer on, and the specs say nothing about DDRmemoryonly DDR2; so will
have to check that out just in case they are both DDR2 and I should be using
one of the othermemoryslots.

AcerUK will not, or cannot, give me a straight answer as to whatmemoryis
compatible with this board so I will have to try and identify the
motherboard and work from that.

Thanks

Geoff

I have a similar problem. My PC does recognizes the two 512 DDR2 667
but it only goes as fast as DDR2 400. Tryed to contact Acer support
and their final response was to ship the PC back to them.

Hope sombody can help with a BIOS patch or something.

Thanks,
Giovanni

wrote in message
ups.com...
On Sep 12, 7:56 am, "Geoff" wrote:
"TGGA" wrote in message

. uk...



Some being by the name of Geoff managed to piece together the
following:

Neither of thememorysticks will work individually in the other Slot
(Slot 1 ?) and the system will not boot. However the system will
recognise
either of the 1Gb modules in Slot 0 and the original 512 Mb in Slot 1
(reporting a total of 1.5 Gb). Thememoryis OCZ PC2 4200 1024Mb DDR2
(Part No: OCZ25331024V). Bothmemorymodules have been checked as
working
on my own system.

Doesn't theT180have 4memoryslots? I had a look on the Crucial site and
it says it'll take 4 x 1gb -
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/list...=Aspire%20T180

--
The trouble with women is that they never put the toilet seat back up!

Agreed, I eventually managed to find and download the specs and manual
(user
guide) from theAcerUS site and the specs say 4Gb as well, but nothing as
to how that 4Gb is made up (ie 2 x 2Gb or 4 x 1Gb). There are four slots,
but looks to me as if two are DDR2 and the other two DDR (two distinct
colours). The manual is useless apart from telling you how to turn the
computer on, and the specs say nothing about DDRmemoryonly DDR2; so will
have to check that out just in case they are both DDR2 and I should be
using
one of the othermemoryslots.

AcerUK will not, or cannot, give me a straight answer as to whatmemoryis
compatible with this board so I will have to try and identify the
motherboard and work from that.

Thanks

Geoff

I have a similar problem. My PC does recognizes the two 512 DDR2 667
but it only goes as fast as DDR2 400. Tryed to contact Acer support
and their final response was to ship the PC back to them.

Hope sombody can help with a BIOS patch or something.

Thanks,
Giovanni


Managed to resolve the problem myself today, but my experience over the past
month goes to prove how the lack of good documentation together with a lack
of good knowledgeable support staff (as well as a certain amount of admitted
self-complacency on my part) can make a mountain out of a mole hill.

I'm still not sure whether the solution I found is peculiar to this specific
computer (i.e. it does have a motherboard problem), or a problem in the
general design of the motherboard used in the T180 computers, but if it is
of help to anyone out there it worked for me.

As TGGA stated the motherboard does in fact have four memory slots, two
pairs but with different colour surrounds. From my experience this set up
has only been used where the motherboard supports different types of RAM
(SDRAM/DDR & more recently DDR/DDR2). In the absence of any documentation to
the contrary, I had, wrongly, presumed this to be the case with this
motherboard and had ignored the two colour-matching memory slots that had
not been used. In fact all four slots are DDR2 (so why the different
colours?), but the computer would only recognise the new memory if it was
installed in what was the vacant (matching colour) slots. Simply replacing
the factory installed memory did not work and the computer would not boot.

The computer is now running very nicely with 2.5Gb (the original factory
installed memory in its default slot and the 2 x 1Gb sticks in the
colour-matched pair of slots) being fully recognised by the BIOS and Vista.

Hope this info is of some help to someone out there.

Geoff

Geoff - I've read in lots of places that you can 'fudge' extra memory in
a T180 into working by using odd layouts of modules in the various
slots. In my experience, this is just something of a miracle and masks
the real cause of the problem.

Put simply, the T180's motherboard/Bios doesn't behave the way you
would expect when you put extra memory into it.

-What every sensible motherboard in the world does-: Notices that the
memory configuration has changed (usually signified by a 'CMOS Mismatch'
error) and takes you into the BIOS screens to 'save and exit' the new
configuration. It then works perfectly with the newly registered
memory.

-What the T180 does-: Nothing. It just tries to struggle on with the
memory configuration it already has stored, which means that the machine
either locks up, behaves badly, or 'sort of' recognises some or all of
the new memory if you insert it in odd combinations.

To force the machine to acquire the new memory configuration properly
with the modules in the locations that you actually think they should be
in, all you have to do is clear the CMOS by powering the machine right
off and removing the CMOS battery for five minutes. (Then put it back
in). When you power the machine back up you won't necessarily see any
message to the effect that the memory configuration has changed, but
dumping the CMOS forces the motherboard to re-scan and re-store all the
machine details including whatever memory configuration it now finds
fitted. Once back into windows you should see that the new memory is all
on-stream and working properly. (You will also have to reset the
time/date).

Since the motherboard does NOT automatically notice when the memory
layout has changed, you will probably find that you have to clear the
CMOS every time you change the memory layout or size (which hopefully
won't be too often, once you have it the way you want it).

If clearing the CMOS still doesn't resolve your problem then try
looking up a BIOS upgrade from Acer's website - the latest one I've
found is version R1-C0 but I didn't need to use that to fix very similar
problems to the ones you are describing. If you do try to flash the bios
be warned that you MUST go into the bios screens and change the 'CMOS
BOOTBLOCK PROTECTION' setting from ENABLED to DISABLED. If you try to
flash it with this setting ENABLED the new bios won't be loaded and
worse still, the original one will be damaged.

As to the two pairs of coloured sockets - if you put an identical pair
of modules in same-coloured sockets they will function in dual-channel
mode which I gather is faster. You could, for example, have 2 * 512MB in
the purple slots and 2 * 1GB in the orange slots. If you mix and match
modules randomly across the array of sockets they will still work, but
each module will only function in single channel mode.