Mike said:
If one of the RAM slots on my PC is showing up as empty in the BIOS
even though there is a RAM chip in there, what does that mean?
That the motherboard doesn't like it for some reason.
There can be a large variety of reasons for that, everything from
it not being a stick that it likes, thru to a bad socket to it just not
being inserted properly into the socket etc.
Does it mean the RAM chip is faulty,
Usually not. Those do usually show as being present in the bios,
but just give errors. Some faults can see it not even appearing
in the bios, but that sort of fault isnt very common.
or could it mean the motherboard is faulty?
Yes, it can be because the socket isnt working properly and
there can be a variety of reasons why that can happen.
The easy test for a bad socket or motherboard fault affecting
just one socket is to move the ram sticks between sockets and
see if the stick that is currently being recognised in another
socket is seen when its in the socket that the bios doesn't see
a stick in. Best to do that simple socket check with just one stick
and try it in each socket in turn. But some motherboards are
fussy about which socket to use if only one stick is used etc.
