Ram upgrade..slowed down laptop??

I have an acer aspire 5100 laptop..it comes with 2gb ram and its running on 32 bit windows vista. I upgraded it to 4gb, and i think that it may have slowed my computer down instead of speeding it up. My laptop has random slow spurts now and its very irritating. Does anyone know anything about this or how to fix it so my programs and overall laptop run smoothly..?? help would be greatly appreciated...thanks

 

Vista 32bit doesn't support 4GB. Try running with 3GB.

 

although vista 32 cannot use the entire 4gb... but it will still see 3gb and use that 3gb... there are so many factors that can slow down a computer. But if you say it's slower right after upgrading ram, check that you have compatible memory sticks, and that you have proper settings on the BIOS or on the motherboard. Some laptops/desktops require some other stuff to do other than just snapping in another module. Read your manual. Or try just putting in 3gb as mentioned above.

 

If i want to have it run on 3gb can i do that without having to open the panel on the bottom of my laptop? Im not amazing with computers so i dont know about the proper BIOS settings. Im also sure i have the right amount of memory because I didnt the system check on a ram card site and it gave me the exact one form my laptop. I have a strong feeling that my comp is being slow because of the memory upgrade, because it used to play videos and run more smoother before the upgrade plus i just restored it to factory setting about a week ago and it still has this "random sluggish spurts" issue again so it couldnt be a virus or anything of that sort that would be making it slow.

any suggestions??

 

Does taking out the new ram correct the problem?

 

My desktop recognizes the whole 4 gigs for 32 bit vista.

 

Well, let's see, According to wal-marts listing (I dislike wal-mart) :evil:
Their PC,s with 32Bit vista have 3Gigs max. Take a look.
But then their PC's with 64 bit vista have 4 gigs at max.
@Judeh101 are you sure that it's 32 bit? Perhaps it's other than home basic or home premium?
Oh well, I really don't depend on Wal-Mart anyway. I'm suprised their giving this much specs though. Usually they just trick older people into buying a brick saying thing like "It's fast". Heck, I seen a Wal-Mart catalog and they had a picture of a Nintendo Wii that's stand was backwards.

 

Recognize vs support are 2 different things. See how much RAM vista is actually able to use, it is not 4GB. MS made it show 4.0GB as part of SP1, presumably for the people who don't understand the 32bit limitation but buy systems with 4GB/32bit OS and would complain if they saw what was actually usable.

 

Like goofball said earlier.... recognizes... but unfortunately cannot use the extra 1gb. Sorry. It's a 32bit limitation. Run Vista 64.

 

Well Let's get back on topic.
What speed it the ram?

 

ummm not sure...

 

Can I hhave a model # then, it should be 533Mhz.

 

# Chipset: ATI Radeon EXPRESS 1100
# Drive Form Factor: 2.5"
# Drive Interface: SATA
# Maximum Memory: 4096MB
# Slots: 2 (2 banks of 1)
# Standard Memory: 1024MB removable
# USB Support: 2.x Compliant

Memory i bought:

2GB 200-pin SODIMM

* Module Size: 2GB
* Package: 200-pin SODIMM
* Feature: DDR2 PC2-5300

 

Not really sure what this has to do with the Aspire One......

My guess would be Vista's "superfetch".
Are you sure the actual machine is slower once booted, or was this
based on how long the machine is now taking to boot and become usable?
Vista does many dumb things in the name of "performance" that actually can hurt normal usage.
Most are things that are attempting to correct other dumb things being done by the
shell applications or OS. ReadyBoost and Superfetch fall into that category.
On a HP machine I have running 32bit Vista, when I bumped the memory from 2gb to 4gb the
boot time dramatically increased.
(Yes I know all about the 4gb issue so don't bring that up. The system uses 3.5bg of the 4gb of memory)
While the actual machine isn't any slower, the time from powering up the machine
to being fully usable is quite a bit longer.
Once Superfetch has gone through its nonsense, the machine works just like before.
Once all this churning is done, the more common things I run will start up faster
the first time I run them after a reboot because Superfetch loaded all that
extra memory with my more commonly used programs.
From my perspective, I'd rather the machine be ready to use sooner and simply
wait a bit longer for the initial loading of a program.

If Superfetch is disabled, the time to be ready after a power up is reduced back
to what it was with less memory, and I can have my applications up and running sooner
than with with superfetch enabled.
However, since normal operation is slower without superfetch, I ended up leaving it enabled.
This is one of several things I've noticed in Vista that are attempting to offer
an "enhancement" but in my view are really solving problems that are not really problems
(some problems are MS self inflicted) or are solutions that only work for certain environments.
And unfortunately, in some cases
if you don't run the OS in exactly the way that MS wants, with certain features enabled,
something else breaks or runs slower.


--- bill

 

Or maybe he modded his OS and enabled the PAE function. Then he can use 16gig of ram on 32bit OS if he wants.

 

Ok, this laptop is really frustrating me! I restored it to factory settings about 2 weeks ago and it still is incredibly slow with starting up programs or handling 2 or 3 programs at a time without it semi-freezing the programs and making them look all choppy before they inevitably opening them. I cannot watch any flash videos anymore because its just too much for the computer to handle. It freezes the video,for example say i watch about 30 sec of somewhat smooth video on youtube, then freezes while still playing the noises in the video and about 2 min later it resumes with smooth play, only to end up repeating this irritating pattern. And no its not because I didnt let the video buffer/load on youtube. This still happens when fully loaded.

I really need help with this, i dont know what to do, and most of you guys are throwing thing at me like OS format and what not, i really have no clue what most of that stuff is. So if somebody can help me fix this problem and come up with a solution that would be very much appreciated!

 

PAE is enabled by default on my computer, which helps it recognize the full 4 gb of memory.
Moving on, did you buy a ram that had lower rated timings?

 

No, im pretty sure i didnt, it was expensive ram, 100 dollars