As stated by others, you can use belarc or just pop open the cover (you
might as well do the latter as you will need to in order to add the new ram
later). Crucial.com is an excellent source of memory modules and will also
tell you the limitations of your motherboard.
My addition to this thread concerns usability of the additional memory. You
don’t mention in either thread whether you are running the 32 or 64 bit
version of Vista. If you are running the 32-bit variety, be aware that the
most memory you will be able to address is roughly 3.2GB regardless of the
installed amount due to a limit on the number of addresses available in the
x86 build (roughly .8GB are reserved for addressing the system hardware, the
remainder are assigned to memory). If you are running x64, then you will be
able to address all 4GB.
The second consideration is whether or not you will be able to utilize this
added memory, as 2GB is more than sufficient for most users. Those that
might benefit are heavy gamers, users of autocad, and those that frequently
edit images or video. Basically, those that page heavily with 2GB – you
would notice a lot of disk activity as pages are acccessed. If you are not
paging frequently, adding ram is likely to be of little use for you, and you
actually may see a reduction in the memory response rate as many
motherboards knock the access speed down a notch when all sockets are full.
—
Best of Luck,
Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" – Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help – www.rickrogers.org
Vote for my shoe: http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
"KRK" <> wrote in message
news:…
> Hello,
>
> A follow-up to my earlier thread.
>
> I am thinking of increasing my RAM to 4Gb from 2Gb.
>
> According to the manual there are 2 memory slots accessible from the
> underside of the PC (Toshiba laptop), and 4Gb is OK (2 * 2Gb).
>
> I need to know what is already installed, ie 1 * 2Gb module, or 2 * 1Gb
> modules.
>
> In other words will I need to buy 1 or 2 new 2Gb modules?
>
> Vista Control Panel (System) confirms that I have 2Gb, but not how it is
> arranged.
>
> Can this be done from within Vista ? or do I need to get out my
> screwdriver ?
>
> Thanks
>
> KK
