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The old guy at the parts counter in Tulsa taught me to reseat RAM before touching anything else, and it's saved me hundreds
Back in 2010 I was swapping out power supplies on a machine that wouldn't boot and getting nowhere, until he told me to just pull the sticks and click them back in. Turned out the real problem was a loose DIMM the whole time, and I still do that first on every no-post call. How many of you run through reseating before you even crack open a diagnostic tool?
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shanec611d ago
The thing people miss about reseating is that it's not just about a loose stick, it's about breaking the oxide layer that builds up on the contacts over time. I had a Dell Optiplex last year that sat in a garage for two summers, and pulling and reclicking the RAM fixed it even though nothing felt loose at all. That thin film on the gold pins is enough to kill the connection, and just wiggling the stick scrapes it clean. So half the "reseat fixed it" stories aren't loose slots, they're dirty contacts getting rubbed. That also explains why the same machine can fail again a year later, the layer just builds back up. A pencil eraser on the pins does the same job if you want to be thorough about it.
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