HP Pavillion Max memory question. Am I really limited to 1GB?

Well I'm pretty sure my dad has some sticks in his computer closet so I'll try to salvage some to try it.

Ok so today I tried 2 1gb sticks and it posted at 512mb and in windows showed 512. Then I put just 1 stick of 1gb in and it did the same thing. Then I put 2 512's in and it wouldn't post or boot and with 1 512 it wouldn't, then I put the originla 2 256's in and it worked fine. I removed and reinserted multiple times to make sure it was seated correctly and all the memory was kingston. Not sure what this means except its time to upgrade this pos.

Yes those limits are real and are from back in the day when Dell PC really was a bad word. (Or in this case HP). Upgrades really were not possible unless you overpaid the builder to upgrade the BIOS to allow other things (or add an actual SLOT to a motherboard that has an AGP BUS on it)

This is just a bios add though so at the risk of bricking your computer you maybe able to find the OEM manufacturer of the board by looking for a model number printed on the PCB itself( sometimes hidden by Dell/HP sticker) and force flashing it to OEM specifications.

You also risk losing your windows activation via this method so it is not recommended.


I really would not spend any money on upgrading that PC though. Last year I was able to pick up full pentium 4 based systems on Ebay for WELL under 100 shipped (One system was $65 shipped)

On older DDR setups you have to make sure you are running low density ram. Hence why some GOOD eBay sellers will post about possible compatibility issues.

Then I put 2 512's in and it wouldn't post or boot and with 1 512 it wouldn't, then I put the originla 2 256's in and it worked fine.

Click to expand...

Hm, that doesn't make sense, since it should officially work with 512MB sticks. Unless they just happened to both be bad sticks. Only seeing 512MB from the 1GB sticks seems a bit odd, too... I guess it could make sense if it will only recognize 512MB per DIMM, but that wouldn't explain why it would only see 512MB total with two 1GB sticks installed.

Just out of curiosity, have you checked for BIOS updates from HP? It's unlikely, but I suppose there could be some sort of BIOS bug, if you're running an old version.

But beyond that, yeah, I really wouldn't put much more effort into it. It's just not worth pulling your hair out over a system like that.