As for whether a 64-bit D830 could really accept and use 8G RAM seems unclear.

According to Dell this model will take 4GB RAM max. I mentioned that in the post.

I chatted with a Crucial tech who said using PC2-6400 800 MHz rather than PC2-5300 667 MHz RAM would improve performance, contrary to your comment above that it will only run at 667 MHz maximum even if 800 MHz RAM is installed. Which is correct?

Latitude D830 specs says it’s DDR 2 667MHz Memory. Can it run at 800MHz, not sure. Just buy PC-6400 if in doubt.

I managed to get my D830 taken apart and put back together without breaking anything. I didn’t know what I was doing *before* I had read your tutorial and took out the hard drive by mistake. No harm done except for a few heart palpitations. When I booted up thereafter it warned that my date and time might be incorrect and asked to run Setup or a Diagnostic. I didn’t have any idea which to select, but tried the Diagnostic then aborted because it was taking too long. I then did the bootup without running Setup, and all seems OK except the calendar date and time were wrong – easy to reset from within Windows.

I note that Dell recommends in its D830 Service Manual, as does the Crucial instructional video, that after removing the battery you press the power button to ground the motherboard before doing any work inside. I didn’t notice this fact mentioned above.

Some comments above about using more than 4G RAM (such as 8G) would only apply to a 64-bit op system. If I understand correctly a 32-bit op system cannot recognize more than 3-3.5G RAM. As for whether a 64-bit D830 could really accept and use 8G RAM seems unclear.

I chatted with a Crucial tech who said using PC2-6400 800 MHz rather than PC2-5300 667 MHz RAM would improve performance, contrary to your comment above that it will only run at 667 MHz maximum even if 800 MHz RAM is installed. Which is correct? That may determine how I decide to upgrade. I currently have 2G PC2-5300 and could buy another stick of the same kind. Alternately I could buy two sticks of 2G PC2-6400 to get the 800 MHz speed – if it really works that way(?).

Happy Holidays!

Regards, Marc

Very helpful. Love the graphics/pictures!

recently re-installed windows XP and now my Dell D830 is not recognising the crucial 2MB ram I nstalled. Any ideas?

Reinstalling OS shouldn’t affect memory at all.
Check out the BIOS settings. Can you see memory in there?
Did you have same XP installed before?