Toshiba Satellite RAM upgrade?

BuffetBarbarian

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Hello all,
I recently bought myself a new laptop from Best Buy, a Toshiba laptop with a quad-core processor, a Radeon R5 graphics chip... I was happy. I was especially impressed by the fact that the Best Buy website, and in-store associates assured me that the laptop could be upgraded from the initial 4GB of DDR3 RAM to a total of 16GB.
I didn't do enough research.
I found out yesterday that my laptop is a special model which has a BIOS lock, making it incapable of user upgrades. Upon adding a second RAM chip, the laptop refuses to boot - even to make it past the BIOS.

Enough backstory, though, on to my question:
Is there any way to flash the BIOS to a point where the laptop is capable of being upgraded? Or am I just screwed?

The model:
Toshiba Satellite C55D-B5206
Link to the Toshiba website here.
 
You would have to look to see if you Toshiba has an updated BIOS on their website. Either that, or find a modified BIOS for your laptop (not very likely) that you'd like to risk flashing.

According to Crucial's website though, you should be able to upgrade to 16GB.

Does the pair you got match the speed/voltage/timings to your other stick(s)?
 
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I ended up getting a single stick of PNY 4GB 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM from Best Buy day-before-yesterday, and when I stuck it into my laptop it refused to boot at all.
According to the Toshiba website, the RAM in the computer is not upgradable by the user - locked at 4GB. I suppose I could swing by a BestBuy in the next few days and pick up a dual package of PNY 4GB sticks, and just stick them both in at the same time to see if it works, but I'm not exactly confident in it working.
I'm decent at working with computer software, and diagnosing problems/troubleshooting issues when it comes to hardware, but working with the BIOS on a computer is actually something I haven't done before. Any suggestions on how I should go about updating teh existsing BIOS, or finding a modified one and flashing it, if the two exactly-the-same sticks of ram don't work for me?

Thanks.
 
Look on Toshiba's site for your model for a possible BIOS update.

As far as a modified BIOS...good luck. You're going to have to do some Googling for that, and most likely there isn't a modified BIOS.
 
You can't just shove any memory into a laptop... From the looks of things that laptop must have DDR3L... Basically, don't expect a stick that works at 1.5v to ever work in that laptop, it must be 1.35v. That aside, the BIOS isn't capable of limiting the system in terms of memory capacity these days really unless the manufacture is interested in hampering performance on purpose... It's mostly the Memory Controller in the CPU, and the physical slot availability on the board that will limit you.

So, DDR3L-1600, and they must be the exact same sticks. I honestly can't find anywhere other than the Toshiba website that says this unit isn't capable of being upgraded.
 
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Thank you both.
Admittedly, I didn't have a clue that there was actually a difference between DDR3 and DDR3L. For some reason, I simply assumed that it was just a different way of marketing the same thing, lol.
I will do some searching around, see if there's a BIOS update, and somewhere I can get some DDR3L-1600Mhz RAM.
Again, thanks.
 
It will fit the slot, and for the most part DDR3 is DDR3L. The key difference is voltage, DDR3 tends to use 1.5v, while DDR3L tends to use 1.25v to 1.35v Other than that, they are pretty much identical.
 
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