Im currently working on a laptop for a friend. Its an oldish one (2004/05) and it will boot sometimes to windows before freezing while sometimes it will bring up the splash screen (the hp one) and sometime it brings nothing up at all. I was dissassembling it earlier and while taking the ram cover off the wireless card is there but there is NO ram. most times when there is no ram or it is bad it will not post. but this one posts right upto the dashboard/GUI before freezing.
Neither of which the BIOS can use and work with to even POST. Likely there is some onboard ram soldered onto the mobo. Seen a few laptops like that, problem is if the onboard goes bad there usually isn't a way to disable it/remove it without a soldering iron. New ram could solve the problem yes. Bad ram can cause all sorts of issues that are difficult to track down and can be incredibly sporadic.
Get a livecd and run memtest86, not only will it tell you how much memory is present (of which there is undoubtedly some) but it will also give it a good thrashing and hopefully let you know if it is indeed faulty or not.
RAM and wireless cards don't generally go in the same compartment. It's not the RAM cover. Likely it's under a different cover on the bottom, or under the keyboard. There is, of course, RAM in the computer! Unless you've looked in the events and determined otherwise, I wouldn't necessarily blame RAM straight away.
A lot of laptop mobo's have one ramslot under a cover so the user can place extra ram. The other ram slot at the opposite side of the mobo, so only accessible when you open the entire laptop. I've seen this with HP's, Lenovo and Sony laptops. If you are lucky it isn't soldered on.
Having looked at the manufacturers disassembly instructions there is definately ram missing where it is ment to be.
if the laptop has two ports there may be a hidden stick somewhere; some older laptops have ram onboard the motherboard and one extra dimm slot for upgrades; if this is empty and the laptop posts then this could be the case. be under no illusion that the laptop posts with no ram; it will not; ever. the problem could be a corrupt chipset which is why it sometimes locks at the hp screen which is a pre post screen. try removing all hardware apart from mb/cpu/ram/screen and see what happens; if it posts fine and doesnt boot when dvd/hdd plugged back in then possibly dvd/hdd fault or an internal ide fault or again chipset corruption... new motherboard time!
Expansion Slots Total (Free) 2.0 ( 0.0 ) x CardBus - Type I/II/III , 1.0 ( 1.0 ) x Memory - SO DIMM 200-pin presume this means 1 port with ram and one free port (hence no ram at base) probably a corrupt motherboard; maybe a bent motherboard (not physically bent but virtually bent causing disruption to chipset) just noticed your in bradford also.. maybe hook up and get a friend to look into it for you or a quick assessment myself....
my mate can reprogram the bios he charges £20 he does them all the time he help me out from time to time
Fully dissassembled it noticed two things. 1. Roaches. 2. A tonne of stuff inside it is cooked. As soon as it turns on you smell burning so for less than i was charging them, I went online and bought a working model (£30) fully working. Swapped harddrives out/ So its working for them and I have a nice pile of parts I can work on.
I hated it when HP and dell put out laptops with each of the two ram slots in opposite sides. One required you to take out the keyboard, and the other was just under a simple cover.
You think that's bad? Try acer. The CPU heatsink is held in place by 4 'push-posts', without any screws, so like mine the heating and cooling cycles cause them to come out of the sockets, and eventually break, along with breaking the CPU.
