Laptop ram problem

[Admiral Nelson]

I've had an unmodified Dell M1330 laptop for around a year now. Until this, I've had no problems.

A couple of days ago, I shut it down in hibernation mode. When I tried to boot it up again later that day, I got an error on startup. It said:

Memory write/read failure at 0040C100, read 000840AF expecting 40AF40AF
To resolve this issue, try to reseat the memory.
Decreasing available memory
Memory address line failure at 08000000, read 00000000 expecting FFFFFFFF
To resolve this issue, try to reseat the memory.
Decreasing available memory

So I reseated the RAM. (2x1GB DDR2 PC2-5300). It wouldn't boot after that either. I then did the usual testing to see whether I had a faulty stick of ram or a faulty slot, trying them all separately, and they all resulted in successful boots. However, whenever I try to boot with both sticks, I get the same error again!

My BIOS is fully updated.

Any thoughts? I'm out of ideas.


EDIT: I've been running memtest, and now for one of the sticks it says:

Memory error detected! Pair 16134144 does not store values accurately. MemTest has detected that your computer cannot accurately store data in RAM. You need to fix this.

Is there a way to repair that stick of ram? Or is it now garbage? Curious that it can still boot on that RAM stick alone though.

[Freddie]

You can't fix bad ram, if your laptop has warranty with Dell I suggest you make full use of it if not you will have to buy new memory for it. I suggest you use this site and use the memory selector tool to make sure you choose the right memory for your laptop, also Crucial ram has a lifetime warranty so if it goes wrong they will replace it for you.

The alternative is to run you laptop with half the memory, if you have XP 1Gb is still be enough to give you a smooth experience if all your doing is word processing, course work and web browsing.