I installed a RAM upgrade this morning on the MacBook, moving from two 256K modules to two 512K modules.
While Apple is getting kudos for the ease of HD removal (video from Macworld), the RAM upgrade requires notably more force than I imagined. The instructions are simple, and the only tool required is a small Philips screwdriver. Getting the installed modules out was straightforward, but putting the modules in was difficult because you don’t have much leverage, and your fingers take a beating. My first attempt failed. I put the computer back together and tried to start it up. No dice. I didn’t panic immediately because I’ve had a somewhat similar experience in the past with a different Mac. I opened the battery bay up again, and pushed until my fingers were dented, and kept pushing. I never heard the promised “click” to tell me that the modules were fully seated, but they were farther in, so I gave it a try. Success.
Seems Dave Winer had the same problem, but he must have given up on the more-than-educated pressure technique. The quote from a tech at an Apple Store was: “You really have to force it in there.”
Definitely. Apply educated pressure. Then try pressure beyond what you think is safe. If the L-shaped bracket which covers the modules doesn’t lie flat before you put the three screws back on, then you probably haven’t gone far enough.
As I noted yesterday, I’m thrilled with the computer overall, but might as well point out the annoyance, too.
36 responses so far ↓
1 Yishai // May 22, 2006 at 11:23 am
Right you are - I really had to RAM those modules in there…thanks for the post John — I was beginning to fear the worst, but all it took was a little more pressure.
2 Adam Jarvis // May 23, 2006 at 7:03 pm
The Macbook is the first new computer I’ve bought in 6 or so years, and I thought I had broken it within the first couple of hours.
You just saved me from a heart-attack. Thanks for posting.
3 damon // Jun 1, 2006 at 9:38 pm
I have used less force doing maintenance on my car! Thanks for the reassuring post.
4 Nick // Jun 5, 2006 at 9:27 pm
I went beyond what i thought was unsafe, and had to go balls to the wall, pushing until i had veins popping out of my hands, and finally it worked. I thought i was going to ram them through the entire computer if i kept pushing!
5 Christian // Jun 7, 2006 at 12:09 pm
I pushed until I had exerted enough force to crack the mobo…at that point the macbook turned on with 2Gb. It would have certainly been enough to break the ram slot on my 15″ Alubook. Very scary. The best signal that they are not in far enough is yes, hearing the beep but before that when the metal strip does not screw back in comfortably.
6 minamitek // Jun 8, 2006 at 4:04 am
phew, that was useful and timely advice. i’d just gotten to the sweating and swearing stage. it’s all in there now, and my fingers are slightly bruised.
7 Yerfdog // Jun 8, 2006 at 10:20 am
In similar situations, using a piece of dowel cut with a small notch along its side to provide more surface area to push against has helped enormously. It’s probably a combination of a tight slot fitment, a lot of pins, and the odd-angle making it seem so difficult.
8 Logan-five // Jun 9, 2006 at 5:12 am
I just searched google once, to find out what I was doing wrong, and then I read this! Thanks guys for sharing your similar experience. Now back to wrong on it…
9 Kellen // Jun 14, 2006 at 8:51 am
Hey Yerfdog mind sharing what you found on Google?
10 _jvc // Jun 20, 2006 at 12:00 pm
i wonder if they changed something - I didn’t think it was that bad. White MacBook/2 Gig kit update
11 Alex // Jun 22, 2006 at 7:11 am
I have found that the Apple Remote makes a remarkably effective RAM pusher-inner-thingie.
It IS useful for something.
12 jetpowr // Jul 10, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Thanks to all of you guys for leading me through the gauntlet. Yes, it is a tight, tight fit. Didn’t lose any blood, but found that the key in my brand-new MacBook was to gunch those chips in equally from side to side. I used two slightly callussed fingertips (my own), which provided just the right tactile feedback to make me feel - bolstered by your posts - not unsafe. The metal strip is only almost as flat against the chips as before - perhaps 1/16″ proud from the rim - but the battery fits fine, and it boots up just fine.
That said, I want to note my machine is less than a week old. It may be easier than a month or two ago.
13 Raginglepto // Jul 18, 2006 at 8:04 pm
bought some more memory hoping that i could do this in 5 minutes. PFfff still can’t get anything to work new or old memory. Last time I pushed something into a hole this small I was in thailand and she swore she was 19. jk
hope I get this mess working
14 anthony // Jul 30, 2006 at 5:20 pm
pfft…what a joke this is. i’ve shoved it in and it seems right, but the computer wont’ power up with it in. i put back the old Ram and it powers up with it…but with 512 RAM this computer is slower than computers in the 1980s — a complete dog.
i’m disgusted with this shoddy product.
15 J Fish // Aug 8, 2006 at 11:18 am
Thanks for this article. I ordered 2 x 1gb sticks and tried doing it..the metal strip would not go back on right and when I started it up and checked the system profiler it showed only 1 gb. I thought maybe I broke the other stick. I cam across this article and found out forcing is necessary. However on my second try I also immediately switched the rams from one slot to the next hoping this might help and IT DID!! It worked without much additional force. I dont know why but it worked for me. 1st attempt took me 15 minutes as I was slow and cautious. Second attempt took me 3 minutes. Hope this helped.
16 Pedro Tacowalker // Aug 26, 2006 at 5:57 pm
I just got done installing my 2×1gb and I was glad I read this first. Pushing them in did take some force and it is a good idea to turn around the macbook so you are pulling the ram towards you. Also take it slow and wiggle them in mm by mm. No issues for me it seems, booted up great and shows both sticks working great.
17 artis // Sep 4, 2006 at 5:11 pm
I will soon upgrade the ram. i’m a little disappointed that i have to spend more money already than the 1300 on the notebook. :/
18 Ken // Sep 8, 2006 at 8:50 pm
I had trouble too. I ended up using a solid piece of oak 10″ x 3/4″ x 3/8″ which worked fine. This was a scrap left over from a hard wood flooring job. I was able to apply the extreme amount of force that was necessary without doing any further damage to my fingers. The ram actually left a mark on the endgrain of the wood.
19 bubba // Sep 27, 2006 at 12:51 pm
where do you guys buy the 1G RAM from…512 is too less..mine is a month old and I hate it bec its so effing slow..
20 Drew // Sep 29, 2006 at 3:27 pm
I managed to get it with my fingers, but it definitely required plenty of force. Thanks for blogging this. It helped to know I wasn’t alone in my installation struggles!
21 david // Nov 9, 2006 at 11:45 pm
having no solid pieces of oak present, i used a plastic pen. my pen is beyond writing capacity anymore, but ram is finally in! thanks for the reassuring comments. silly macs.
22 John-B // Mar 13, 2007 at 6:34 am
I have 300 to do in the next few months, please pray for me and my fingers….
jb
23 Em // Apr 7, 2007 at 9:58 am
Heh same here we feared to spend 6 hours on a mac shop but … just to read your post and everything goes fine
thanks
24 Vinson R // Apr 28, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was pulling my hair out. I know other people said this before but this was a tremendous help. I was fearing the worst.
25 Inna // Aug 15, 2007 at 6:53 am
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I am trying to unscrew the three screws and I got two of them, but the third one won’t even budge. What was the point of them using such tiny screws???? Very frustrating, because the third one seems to not be screwed in straight.
26 Sami // Sep 3, 2007 at 8:01 am
Bought 2 gigs of ram today for my Macbook. First time the Macbook didn’t boot, only white light flashing (the one that flashes when you put the computer to sleep). Opened macbook again and then pressed those bastards as hard as I could and then the Macbook booted happily again!
27 Arnar // Sep 18, 2007 at 6:17 am
I just gave up after unscrewing and screwing in that L-bracket like 10 times. No matter how hard I pushed (within my physical limits) - no go with the 2gigs. Put the 1gig back in with moderate force and it works fine. Must be some other problem for me..
28 Syls // Sep 30, 2007 at 3:46 pm
EXCELLENT. Thank you so much for blogging this. I didn’t want to push my 512 sticks in too hard, because I thought I heard little cracking sounds, but now I’ll just shove like there’s no tomorrow. Thanks!
29 nitsu // Oct 18, 2007 at 1:37 pm
arnar and others, i just received a 2gb memory from owc, and i already have a 1gb in that i had installed at an apple store
so i have one 256 mb’s and one 1gb, i would like 2gb to add, but whenever i add the 2gb instead of 256, macbook wont start up, like in your case, but then i put 256 back in and then it turns on! im not sure whats wrong here !!!!
30 Gamoe // Nov 16, 2007 at 1:50 am
Thanks for the post! I was worried when my new MacBook didn’t recognize one of the modules and the metal piece wasn’t quite flush with the edge. It does require quite a bit more pressure than one normally would imagine safe!
31 John F. // Dec 16, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Damn… we just left a Macbook with the Apple Store because we figured it was broken, and maybe now it turns out that I just didn’t push hard enough!
32 zumbaa // Feb 10, 2008 at 2:25 pm
so i tried once and thought they were in!
booted up registered my RAM all 4gb of it… and worked fine until… audio froze in 2 different programs… after 3 times i decided to investigate the RAM….
read this - and now after reinstalling and pushing those suckers all the way in…. i am hoping it works…. so thanks for the tip
so it seems to me that u can install it wrong and the puter wil still work and the ram will work but not perfectly… weird eh?
33 Deke // Feb 19, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I agree. Thanks for the heads up. A lot of force required. But if you apply on both ends equally it is not that bad. At least not on my machine.
34 Victor // Feb 26, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Thanks for the info. I was surprised at how much force it required. I thought the RAM was broken.
35 Danny // May 23, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Thanks man. I freaked and thought i had broken my macbook. because the new and old wouldn’t go in. but with force, everything is a go.
36 Jeremy // Aug 16, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Thanks, this entry saved me a humiliating trip to the Apple store.
To everybody with this problem - keep trying to push it in until it boots. Don’t worry about putting the battery back in or the metal guard - just push it in as hard as you can, plug it into the power supply, and try to boot. If it doesn’t boot, unplug it, push harder, plug it in and try again. I used the end of a pen to really force the DIMM in as hard as possibly could. It took 5 tries before it booted.
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