Thinkpads Forum

Hi, I am trying to upgrade the memory on my T61. I bought a Mushkin 2GB ddr2 5300 stick to add to my existing 1GB ddr2 5300S. When I install both sticks and check the bios, it shows 3gb but when Windows XP begins to load it gives me a memory error. When I try to run each of the sticks separately in slot 0, they both run fine. But when I have them together regardless of the order of the slots I use, I have this problem. I would like to know if it this is a compatibility problem with the memory, or if it is a problem with the expansion slot? I cannot run the machine with memory only in the expansion slot because it gives me the 1-3-3-1 beep error. Please help. Thanks.

Good question...Mushkin is good memory and I have not had any problems with it. My T61 has two 2GB Kingston modules (4 GB total) and they run fine with Windows 7 64 bit. I did have some problems with an old SD card reader that was plugged into the PC card slot. I removed the SD reader and everything worked fine. (I know this is not related)

But...that said, do you have any extra things installed? Is your BIOS set to default? Can you try booting up a different OS like Ubuntu or Windows 7? Did you try booting Windows XP in the safe mode? Can you try a different 2GB module?

Finally...how about running a memory test program on both sticks.

Good luck...

tj2max wrote: I cannot run the machine with memory only in the expansion slot because it gives me the 1-3-3-1 beep error.

1-3-3-1 means no RAM found.
There's obviously a problem with this RAM slot, though this is quite rare on a T6x machine.
You could try inserting/removing the RAM module several times.
Due to age, even gold(plated) contacts corrode, and the inserting/removing could clean this up enough to work again.
Run Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org as advised above.