That's a sod! That'll teach me to be lazy and think "Ahh, that one will be fine, no need to pull my laptop apart and test it". Sorry! I'll bung an alternative one in the post for you that I *WILL* test first this time, and a basic 2GB stick as well in case all else fails.

Ah, I thought maybe it stopped working along the way here but if you didn't test it then maybe it wasn't working before. And I can't test it in my other laptop because that takes DDR2.

Cool, thanks. I can pay for you to send the next ones if you want.

Not sure if it would actually be any use but I think this laptop also has WLAN built in. There's a SIM card slot behind the battery so I assume if I had a data tethering plan with some network I could use the internet out and about.

My last laptop had a sim slot but it wasn't working.

It needed a mini pci-e card that supported WWAN and WiFi

I think you may be right. I saw something under the keyboard that I thought was the WWAN thingy but it looks like it needs another card next to the RAM slot.

Arrived some time over the weekend, got to test it quickly this morning and it worked this time. Thanks very much :D

Yay! Was that the 4GB stick as well?

I didn't try the 2GB. Worked straight away with the 4GB so a nice 6GB now. Been away the weekend so tried it while having my breakfast this morning. So yay, thanks a lot :)

How much of a difference does AHCI make? Or does it depend on the HDD/SSD. Didn't realise it wasn't switched on when I installed Windows so is it worth trying to get it working?

You're welcome :)

I wouldn't worry about it too much. It does make a difference, but only a pretty small one that probably isn't noticeable. Certainly not enough to worry too much about spending time fixing (and changing to AHCI without a re-install isn't trivial). Just remember to turn it on before re-installing Windows in the future - especially if you ever slap an SSD in it!