Comments on: Installing MacBook RAM requires significant force

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 23:24:35 +0000

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.

By: Danny

Danny — Sat, 24 May 2008 04:21:30 +0000

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.

By: Victor

Victor — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:59:13 +0000

Thanks for the info. I was surprised at how much force it required. I thought the RAM was broken.

By: Deke

Deke — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:45:26 +0000

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.

By: zumbaa

zumbaa — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:25:04 +0000

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?

By: John F.

John F. — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:33:03 +0000

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!

By: Gamoe

Gamoe — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:50:51 +0000

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!

By: nitsu

nitsu — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:37:46 +0000

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 !!!!

By: Syls

Syls — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 22:46:08 +0000

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!

By: Arnar

Arnar — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:17:50 +0000

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..