Laptop repair accomplished

I just wanted to log this into the archives as it may help someone some day.

Gateway laptop, my daughter said it felt like things had slowed down. I checked all the obvious stuff, such as what all was loading at startup, virus, spyware, etc. Still felt a bit sluggish, and different than it used to. I noticed that an error message buzzed by at bootup, so I finally grabbed it - something to the effect that the memory size had changed. Since I had not done it, it bothered me. I physically checked & reseated the memory, and booted the computer on a memory testing program. Some of the time it read the correct amount, some of the time it didn't.

I will jump to the conclusion here. I eventually narrowed the problem down to one of the memory sockets, and finally found that two of the connector legs had cracked loose from the circuit board. Part of the time they contacted, part of the time they didn't, so some of the time the machine was missing 64 meg of memory. Reflowed both legs and good to go. Of course, all this investigation was possible only with the use of the microscope - those little legs are hard to see at all, let alone find 2 with cracks. Hope this helps someone else some day.

WT