Satellite P200D-11R sound and graphics crash after waking up from sleep mode

Question

Hi,
I am wondering if anyone here has had similar experiences to mine (below) or can offer any solutions.
I have upgraded my P200D-11R OS to Vista 64 Ultimate to take advantage of the extra performance. I also add that the BIOS has already been updated to version 1.4.
Well, everything works fine with the standard 2Gig of RAM which the laptop was supplied with originally, however, when I upgrade the RAM to 4Gig (2 x 2GB Samsung 667mHz modules), sound and graphics problems appear every time the machine is brought back from sleep mode.
The sound card makes a very laud fuzzy noise every time it wants to play a sound and the graphics produce lots of horizontal lines on the screen. I then just have to restart the machine which means loosing all my unsaved work.
Everything works fine as long as the machine does not enter sleep mode. I have currently disabled the sleep mode to prevent the machine from entering it but I am finding life very hard without it.
I am very surprised and also disappointed at the fact that Toshiba did not test these machines with Vista 64 Ultimate and 4Gig of RAM!
Extra info:
The memory is the same Samsung type as the 1Gig modules supplied by Toshiba originally with the machine, and the part number Toshiba recommends.
I have tried installing other (more recent) device drivers by Realtek and ATI without any improvements.
The memory modules pass all tests and are not defective. They have also been tested on my friends Dell notebook with no problems even in sleep mode.
I have installed my friends Dell 2Gig memory modules in my P200D and they too produce exactly the same results with post-sleep crashes.
My thoughts are that this must be another BIOS issue unless anyone can shed some light on the issue from another angle.
Please help! Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi Sascha
Since you are running a Vista 32bit version, the upper limit of the memory recocnised by the machine is 3.2gb which is the maximum a 32bit operating system can address and use. The diffrence here is that I also upgraded my OS to Vista Ultimate 64bit to get yet better performance out of the 64bit dual AMD processor.
3.2gb of RAM on 32bit OS does not necessarily increase the performance. However, it keeps the performance stable when you open many more programs at the same time since the machine has more RAM to play with before staring to use the much slower hard drive as operating memory (Page File), to keep all thoes open programs running.
A 64bit OS such as Vista Ultimate 64, recognises the whole 4gb of RAM and much more (for instance, 8gb with 2 x 4gb RAM modules). The 64bit OS itself would generally consume more RAM to start with, however, with 4gb I found the general performance to be much better. Going back to the problem however, my P200D-11R with Ultimate 64 and 4gb RAM refuses to wake up from sleep mode gracefully and the graphics and sound crash every time, forcing me to restart.
My feelings at present is that eventhough your machine may be slightly different, I bet if you upgrade your OS to 64bit, the machine will start recognising all of the 4gb of RAM and post-sleep crashes will start to appear!