Upgrading & Fixing Laptops DUMmIES

Populating poorly ................................................................................. One unpleasant practice of s ...

module. Other Web sites may seem to be a bit more expensive, but don’t charge sales tax and ship for free. Do the math. Price d ...

Consult the report available under Windows in the Control Panel. Click Start➪Settings➪Control Panel. Double-click the System i ...

Staying current with modern memory .............................................. The good news is that memory makers keep comin ...

The front-side busis another name for the system bus; on modern machines there’s also a back-side bus,which connects the micropr ...

Refreshing speeds ................................................................................ Another specification for mem ...

Chapter 6: Brain Matters: Memory, Microprocessors, and BIOS 91 Yotta, yotta, zetta It may seem all Greek to you, and much of it ...

All you need to know is this: If your laptop requires ECC memory, you may not be able to use non-ECC modules. And if your PC is ...

like you have to force a module into place, you are probably trying to use the wrong type of module. Some techie-types get all e ...

Installing New Memory: Safety First ............................................................ Memory is subject to damage fro ...

Ground yourself before touching any internal part of the computer. Sit still in a chair and touch a metal pipe or the center sc ...

You recently changed the computer configuration Remember the first question to ask yourself when you attempt to troubleshoot a p ...

Getting fried. If the laptop’s AC adapter or other internal electrical compo- nents fails, a voltage spike may pass through the ...

are properly seated and perform a smell test for the odor of burnt electronics (kind of a combination of burning leaves with a b ...

Getting a headache Your laptop uses all available memory, but it starts from the bottom of the barrel and works its way up. If y ...

Demands and settings Read onscreen messages that reveal memory failures of a particular type or at a specific location. Consult ...

a functioning computer with the push of the On button? Put another way, how does a laptop know how to load and act on instructio ...

plugged in to a daughterboard or attached to a USB port or a PC Card connection — come with small pieces of software called devi ...

(continued) MainScreen System Time: [14:22:25] System Date: [08/31/2005] Hard Disk: XXXXXXXX-XXX Quiet Boot: [Enabled] [Disabled ...

(continued) LCD Display stretch: System Memory: 640 KB Option Setting Explanation Extended Memory: 478 MB BIOS Ver.: V1.60 Langu ...