Laptop not picking up one of my RAM cards

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AndreyD

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Hi guys, I am new to this forum and desperately in need of advice.

I have had a HP pavillion dv7 3188cl for about two years and it had started to get really hot. I decided to take it apart, clena out the heatsink/fan/reapply thermal paste to get it working better. I had never done this before but watched lots of videos and took notes. I was on it all of today. It took me a while but I finally did everything.

To my amazement the laptop turned back on as usual. However I checked properties of my computer and it told me that I now had 2GB of RAM. Before the operation I had 6GB RAM. I took off the cover, took the two RAM chips out (one is 4 GB and one is 2GB) I put them back in. Again i only get 2GB of RAM registering.

Again I took the cover off and swapped the RAM chips. This time upon switching on computer i only got a black screen. So I switched them back and now its working again. Although i ts only registering 2GB of RAM.

Does anyone have any idea whats happened? It may help to know that when I was putting the cover back on for the first time I got a bit rough with it and it scraped the top of the 4GB RAM card. it does not look damaged however. Also the RAM card slot clips seem a bit loose. When I open them they dont push the card up. I have to personally lift them out of the slots.

I am assuming two things.
1. I have damaged the 4GB RAM card
2. You can not swap RAM cards between slots.

So if anyonw has any sort of idea as to what has happened, what i can do to get my RAM back or get more RAM? I dont mind buying another card.

Thank you very much and sorry for the long post. I just wanted to get as much info in as possible
 
Have you tried turning on your system with just one RAM stick in? Try with the 4GB and then try the 2GB, by itself. Might want to try different slots, too. Just to verify..
 
Thank you for the response.

No I havent tried that yet. Like I said. I swapped them. So the 4gb ram went in to the 2gb ram socket and vice versa but the screen came up black and the system did not turn on.

So that made me think that they cant be swapped. But im not an expert, thats just what I concluded.

I will try to run the system on just the 2gb card and just the 4gb card tomorrow and come back with the results

ps will the system run on one card if it came with two?
 
Hi well id like to say its working now.

I tried all the different combinations and it started not working at all. I got really worried and thought that i damaged the RAM connections. Took it to repair shops. One guy said i probably need a new motherboard. took it to another and he said its a problem with the video card. Took it ot the third. He had a look at the RAM cards and put them in again and it worked. Basically I did not click them in properly - was trying to be too gentle I think.

Anyway so all is good. Thanks for the replies
 
Slap those other two guys for me, will you? The one that said the GFX, hit him harder.

I can't believe how stupid guys like these can get.
 
lol yeah its ridiculous. I told the second one its deffinetely a problem with the RAM and he said nope its GFX. Common problem. I said so what are you going to change the card? he said no im just going to 'play around with it and fix it'. WTF.

The first guy to be fair to him did not have a look inside and probably assumed that since I managed to take the whole thing apart and put it back together that I put the RAM cards in properly. So he thought I may have damaged the connectors, and therefore the motherboard.
 
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