How can I find out if my Dell XPS laptop had memory removed?
March 30th, 2010 | 
Author: It worked fine and then a “friend” used it and now it says it has only half of the original memory. None of my programs will work and it tells me it cannot be saved using system restore.
I know I should take it in somewhere to be checked so please don’t take up space repeating the same thing over.
Thanks for your help,
Mandy
It is Windows XP but I am not sure of the version/year.
Incoming search terms:
- how to replace ram on a dell studio 1640
- replacing ram on studio xps 16
- dell xps m1530 no physical memory
- check physical memory laptop dell
- how to replace memory on studio 1645
Related Posts
Posted in 
Tags: 4 Responses to “How can I find out if my Dell XPS laptop had memory removed?”
Leave a Reply
Dell XPS Offers
Dell Deals
What operating system are you using?
If it’s Vista, go to control panel –> Administrative Tools –> Computer Management. On the left choose storage –> disk management. It will show you all the disks in your computer, and how much space is on them. It will also show all partitions and unallocated space. If the space you used to have is not there, then your HDD was either removed, broken, or disconnected so your laptop doesn’t recognize it.
Open it up and look for the memory chips, they should be labeled. You can check to see how much memory is in it. It could be a problem that one of the chips broke and not actually removed.
1. Memory ? You mean you had 2 gig of RAM and now you have 1 Gig ?
2. Hard Drive Space ? You had 200 Gig and now you have 100 Gig ?
Nbr 1: Obviously 1 chip removed. Easy to check with your laptop manual. Find the memory cover, remove it and see if you have 2 memory units.
Nbr 2: If you had 200 gig and now you have 100 gig, your friend (?) obviously deleted a lot of files off your computer and most of them probably part of your program files.
Either way, that friend would never touch anything of mine again.
Sarge
Ok, where did you check the memory size? Do you mean HD space or actual memory?
You can also press F2 at the DELL screen on startup and enter the BIOS to check the physical memory (under system information I believe).
If this is not an issue of physical memory being missing (shows full memory in BIOS), I would suggest running an antivirus scan. You can find some decent (free) scanners (I suggest Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware) on the front page under “Most Popular Downloads”. If you are unable to scan in normal mode, press F8 at the DELL screen on startup and select to boot into safe mode with networking. Run the scans from there.