The IT Thread

[Dānu]

One of my caregivers was here this morning, as usual, and as we were chewing the fat, he up and asked me if there was any way to, say, "plug in" more memory for his laptop, which is a Dell Experian (?)  3576. The alternative being to take it apart, put in memory, and put it all together again. I have no clue.

Memory modules are fastened into the motherboard so, you’d have to have it opened and match the modules inside…if there is an open slot.  Otherwise, replace all of them with larger ones.

If it’s running out of memory when running an application, that may be due to a shortage of hard drive space as some applications use the hard drive to swap memory back and forth.  In that situation, he may benefit from a clean install of the operating system and being judicious in how many programs he reinstalls.  Yes, a pain in the butt but opening the case isn’t needed.  Heck, if he hasn’t shut off and turned back on his computer in a while, that can cause memory problems, too.

Operating systems are much better at handling memory issues these days but still aren’t perfect.  Some programs can hog a lot of memory until you fully close the offending program.  Older systems can have more problems even if they can run a newer program, they might not run it well.

If all this is beyond your skill set, he should take it to a computer store and discuss it with them.

Taking a quick gander at a Youtube video on the subject, while it does require some disassembly to upgrade the memory on the Dell Inspiron 3576 (not Experian), the disassembly and reassembly is fairly easy. The only complication you might find is that while the machine in question does have two memory slots (presuming we're looking at the same model), it's not uncommon for manufacturers to populate both slots with smaller memory to reach the total RAM quota of the build, in which case you'd have to lose half the current memory in the process of adding more memory (and due to timing issues, it's probably advised that if both slots are currently filled, that you replace both with a single memory stick or two matched sticks). That's not absolutely necessary in every case, but it's not uncommon either.