How to Reseat RAM on Dell Optiplex 380/745/755

Overview

If your Dell Optiplex 380, 745, or 755 arrives and won’t display anything (but shows power), you likely need to reseat the RAM. FedEx and UPS throw boxes around, and memory modules can work loose during shipping. In this video, I show you how to open these small form factor machines and properly reseat all four RAM modules so your computer boots again.

Key Moments

• Opening the tool-less side panel with the latch mechanism
• Sliding out the optical drive for better access
• Unclipping all four memory modules
• Proper technique: open clips on both ends before removing
• Reseating modules one by one in correct order
• Pushing evenly across the module until both clips engage
• Sliding optical drive back in place
• Testing the fix—Dell screen appears!

Full Transcript (Edited)

Hi there YouTube, today I’m going to be showing you a quick video of how to reseat the RAM on a Dell Optiplex 380 or a 745 or a 755. This is something that you sometimes have to do when you buy one of these computers and they’re shipped. Sometimes any computer where things might be loose in transit—nowadays FedEx, UPS, they just throw boxes around—if you find yourself that the computer doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t show any output when you power it up, this might be something that you have to do when you receive it. Instead of just getting a green light, you actually get something on the screen.

Let me show you the steps to do that on this model. This will work with any of these small form factor machines—they’re very modular, so they’re very easy to get inside and take a look.

The first thing you need to do is find this latching mechanism back here. Basically this panel comes off. What I do is I lay it flat like that and I pull this latch like this. This entire panel pops open and you just lift it up. It basically hinges on these clips. To put it back, you do the exact opposite—just hinge it on.

The memory modules are these units down here: one, two, three, four. This machine has two gigabytes of RAM installed. In order to access it, you need to do a couple of things. To get the most access to it, what I recommend doing is sliding the optical drive out of the way—the CD drive. You lift this blue panel and then you push in the drive. As you lift this, you push in the drive, and that lets you move this out of the way.

Just like that, you have access to the memory. What I recommend doing is you unclip the memory. Each one of these has little clips at the end, so it’s sufficient that you just push down on one, two, three, four. On the other side you could do the same thing, but if you lift it up, you can just remove it like that.

That one goes there—you should put it back in the same order. What I do is I reseat one by one, so I unclip all four, but I go ahead and do one by one so they go back where they belong.

What I do is I open up the clips on the ends. You see how that clip right there is open? This is how it’s closed. Then if I push down on it—let me get a better shot of you, maybe the white one is better. Over here, for example, this is the closed position. Make sure they’re both open because that’s how they need to be to receive the module back.

Then you put the module into the guides. At the end they have these little guides where they slide in. They slide into the guide, and then in the middle you push like this on all four. I evenly distribute the weight of my hand, the pressure from my hand and my fingers, across the entire module. Then I just push in until it clicks on both sides. You push on each side—one—and then you push on the other side—two—until it clips in. You repeat the process for all four.

Open up on both sides, and then usually it’s sufficient to just do one side, but if you want to be more thorough, you unclip and push back in. Make sure that both sides are clipped in.

Then to verify that everything worked, you slide this guy—this drive—back in. You line it up there and then you just push forward until it clips. That’s it.

We’re gonna power it up. Get the power cord, stick it in there. Now we’re gonna power it up. Green light, and the screen shows the Dell screen! There you have it, computer boots up.

Hopefully that’ll help you out. Remember, you have to just lift this tab up, push the drive in, move it out of place temporarily while you toggle the clips for each memory module. Let me know in the comments if that helped you out. Thank you!