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Upgrading my desktop


At Microsoft we get to refresh our desktops and laptops every couple of years. Most people jump at the opportunity to get the latest equipment, but I usually don’t. I don’t like migrating from an older machine to a newer one and delay the refresh for as long as I can, preferably until the equipment dies, or goes out of compliance.

After approving many equipment upgrades for my team this year, I decided to upgrade my monitor. I always had a single small monitor for my desktop, and never liked the dual monitor setup, or what I jokingly call the “flight simulator” setup with 4 monitors—three side by side, and one on top. My team swears by the productivity increase of seeing everything they need at once, and I believe them. 

However, for me I was weaned on Unix terminals, Emacs, and command line tools, so I learned to live within the confines of a small screen. Nonetheless, getting a larger and crisper display was appealing, so I took the plunge and ordered a 38-inch monitor.

Of course, when I got the new monitor, my computer graphics card was too old to drive it. Instead of getting a newer and more powerful graphics card, our admin suggested refreshing the desktop, since mine was very due for recycling. I concurred and got a new Dell desktop. I plugged in the new monitor and booted. I was pleasantly surprised by how quiet the new machine was, how much faster it booted, and how smooth and crisp the new display looked. Overall a good start.

I was disappointed however that it had less memory and storage than my older computer. The new behemoth came with 16GB of RAM, and 500GB disk. My laptop—strike that, my phone has more memory and storage than that. I asked our admin for a 1TB SSD, and 2x8GB of memory. Installing the SSD and the memory was a breeze, and I booted the computer.

Sadly, nothing. No Sound. No picture. The screen was blank, and I had no clue what happened. I noticed that the power button was flashing different colors, so I went online to the Dell site to figure what was going on. Apparently, the computer communicates error codes by blinking the power button LED. I had to count how many times a color repeats and look at a table online to figure out what the error is. Mine turned out to be a bad memory configuration. Oh boy. The computer came with 2 memory sticks pre-installed, and I added 2x8GB memory sticks in what I thought were the right location.

Buried in the Dell manual for the computer was a table that shows the memory configuration for 32GB worth of RAM—one 8GB memory stick in every other slot. I put in the 2 8GB RAM sticks in the correct slots and booted again. No luck. Same blinking error code.

I tried other memory sticks to no avail, so I gave up, and booted the computer without the extra memory. The computer worked like a charm, with bigger storage, but with 16GB of RAM. I proceeded to install everything I had on the older computer and migrating my files.

In the afternoon, I complained to our admin about how can the new machines have less memory than the older ones. He looked at the computer order, and the order showed 32GB of RAM. What?
I remembered long time ago when I bought an AMD K6 based computer, that the computer shutdown after 3 mins of use. When I investigated, it turned out that the manufacturer did not install the processor fan correctly, and the CPU overheated and shut down to protect itself. Could I have a similar problem here? I wondered if my Dell computer had a loose memory stick.

I opened the computer one last time and examined the memory sticks. Sure enough, one was loose. Each stick was 16GB of RAM, which explained why when I installed the 2x8GB they did not work. How did a loose memory stick pass quality control?

I installed the memory stick correctly, and it was not loose anymore. I booted the computer and got my 32GB back. Teaches me to ask for a new monitor that required a new computer.

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