If you just want to jump straight to a 2GB stick of RAM that is compatible with the HP Mini 210, click here. If you’d like to read about how I eventually found this stick after a number of mis-fires, read on!
Two weeks ago I picked up an HP Mini 210-2001sa from Argos during their technology sale. It came with a gig of RAM which I was keen to upgrade to the system’s maximum 2GB as soon as possible, so on the way home I stopped by my local IT shop and picked up a stick of 2GB DDR3 RAM from Kingston.
I got home and installed the RAM only to find that the netbook now refused to boot up. All I got was a black screen. Amazed that I had been unlucky enough to pick an incompatible stick of RAM, I went back into town to get a different brand. The shop didn’t have any other brands at that specification so I found myself driving to PC World in Aintree.
PC World had an alternative stick from PNY, which I took to the counter and asked them to check in the netbook before I bought it. The assistant seemed to think I was having a laugh when I told her that some sticks weren’t compatible with different machines, until a colleague of hers confirmed my claim and installed the memory for me. The machine booted up fine and device properties reported 2GB of system RAM – great! However, when I tried shut the machine down I discovered another problem – Windows would power down but the power light stayed on and the machine refused to turn off. I had to turn it off by holding the power button. I restarted the machine and tried again – nope, it wouldn’t turn off.
I took out the memory and retried the original stick and the machine returned to normal. The assistant informed me that they didn’t have any other brands and that maybe my netbook was faulty. I didn’t really believe it was faulty because if it was then it wouldn’t work so perfectly with this original stick. I made my way home.
I got home and after a quick Google search found Orca Logic, a memory specialist from Surrey. I phoned them up and explained the trouble I’d had with the netbook and they knew straight away what was wrong. Apparently this netbook (and its Compaq cousins) are incredibly fussy and only accept single bank RAM at very specific speeds. They sent me a 2GB Transcend stick which arrived this morning and thankfully worked perfectly first time.
Thanks for this post, Gareth. My girlfriend’s got a Samsung N150 Plus, and I was going to do the 2Gb upgrade. Seeing how Orca Logic seem to know what they’re doing, I’ll definitely choose and order the correct RAM using their Memory Finder
Yeah I wish I had gone to them in the beginning to be honest. I’d have saved a lot of time and an 18-mile round-trip!
Made my first purchase from Orca. They seem very nice, and I was very happy, until they told me my company’s VAT is invalid (as determined by the ec.europa.eu website)! Scary! I’m using it since quite a few years and regularly pay taxes! Uhm, I will have to investigate (obviously, not Orca’s fault – I just hope it’s the Europa website’s fault)… Anyway, I’m going out of topic, sorry
Hey, hope I’m not annoying you with off-topics. But I discovered an interesting thing about that ec.europa.eu website… In spite of it being so serious (as to claim that its database is always up to date, and that if you’re not listed there you should consult your country’s tax representatives), I found that it simply doesn’t work. Only major companies return a valid VAT. Instead, I tested it with 5 small companies VATs, and none returns as valid! Maybe it’s just a problem with italian VATs, but it’s not nice :/
Hiya
I don’t mind at all! I haven’t come across that website before but it does sound a bit flaky. As you may already know, Nicola is an accountant so I’ll ask her if she knows anything about it.
Thanks Gareth
P.S. can’t believe you’re using eBay again!
I know, but what else can I do?! I tried looking for an alternative but the only things I found were quiet little websites with a couple of hundred listings, max!
No excuses, you subscribed to the dark side of the force
Got the RAM from Orca, installed it, and everything works perfectly: lovely
Hi Gareth,
I am coming back on this old post as I face now the same problems. My founding are that HP locked into bios any RAM upgrade in order that you have to buy directly from HP the 2GB sticks.
Anyway, as I have (old) non supported sticks from my laptop, I was wondering if you could use the following software (check below) in order to send me a copy of the SPD from your Transcend stick. I would like to try to flash my RAM stick with it.
Thank you in advance.
Alx
http://www.techpowerup.com/spdtool/
Hi Gareth, thanks very much for blogging your experiences with this particular netbook.
I bought a HP Mini 210 2000 and I had a similar problem. The seller (an eBay trader) had upgraded the RAM to 2G just before dispatch to me. On arrival I found that it did not boot up right away, I saw a black screen and the fans were spinning. I held down the power for 5 seconds and then restarted after a short pause. This time it booted and all seemed fine. However I discovered that on every reboot it suffered the same “black screen/fans spinning” issue and I had to force shutdown/restart to get it to boot up again. That does no good for the HDD as I heard it click each time I did the force shutdown.
On reporting it to the seller he advised me to return it for a refund but I thought that too hasty. I noticed the BIOS was at “F.14″ and the latest was “F.24″ (check the HP Support website for this model). I was 10 revisions behind! “They must have put in a lot of fixes…” I thought. Anyhow, I did the upgrade which was painless (although you can only do this if on AC power for safety). After the BIOS upgrade to “F.24″ I can now reboot normally so it seems problem solved although I will keep watching…
Just thought I’d report that here in case someone finds it useful. The HP support forums also have reports of this issue and there is further discussion and other approaches there.