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PSA: I fixed a dead laptop by reseating the RAM 6 times before it finally posted
Had a Dell Latitude come in last Tuesday with no display, no beep codes, nothing. I tried the usual stuff first, new power adapter, external monitor, pulling the battery, and still got nothing for about 40 minutes. On a hunch I pulled both RAM sticks and swapped them into the opposite slots, and it fired right up like nothing was ever wrong. Now here is where I want some opinions. Half the techs I know say that is a real fix and the slot was just dirty or the stick was seated bad from the start. The other half say the board or the RAM is on its way out and I just kicked the can down the road for the customer. So do you call that a repair and send it out the door, or do you tell the customer the board might be dying and quote a replacement? What do you all do when a machine does this?
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the_jennifer28d ago
Six times is a lot of reseating for a machine that supposedly just had a loose stick. I work on Latitudes all day and those slots do get flaky, but when a board only posts on one specific working combo you are usually looking at a cold solder joint or a failing slot. Here is the thing most people miss. That machine will probably come back in six weeks doing the exact same thing, and now you have already told the customer it was fixed once. I always reseat, test, and run it hard for a day before it leaves. If it passes I send it out but I do tell them upfront that if it happens again the board is the likely suspect. That way my hands are clean and they are not blindsided.
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