Is it possible to fix laptop memory slot failure with a guitar pick? Yes, it is. You will not fix the memory slot itself, but you can work around the problem. 🙂
Today I received a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 laptop with the following complaint:

Ram Slot Suddenly Not Working Anymore

It was manufactured with 6GB of RAM, one 4GB placed in slot #1 and another 2GB placed in slot #2. I was actually working fine with it, but suddenly i figured a big performance problem in my laptop, after two days, i surprisingly found out that windows 10 detects only 2GB of my RAM (which was actually detecting all 6GB in the past days!). I tried one stick of ram on each slot, all working except one slot AB i guess.the one close to cpu left side. The bios cant read it, neither windows can read but cpuz can read it. Inside the bios i notice a slot read different setting from others also when i go to asus spd it can not read the size of the stick. Not, there just was something inside in the second slot, and the RAM was not go inside correctly. Samsung and Kingston RAMs are in same size, just one 4GB and second one 8GB, totally 12GB. Now working fine. I was trying so many times, and finally after checking all pins, I put it inside correctly. My motherboard is a ASUS Prime Z270-P and the CPU is a I7-6700K. The RAM is Ballistix Sport DDR4-2666 Slots 1 and 2 on my M/B work fine but if I try 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 then all I get is a blank screen. The fans etc are running but nothing is on the screen. I changed the cooler of my CPU today, but the 2 ram slots furthest away from the CPU have stopped working. I use 2 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000 MHz modules. I have tried different configurations to conclude that the RAM itself is not broken. I reset the BIOS, and reseated the CPU. But it didn't work.

The laptop starts and works properly, but recognizes only one of the two memory modules installed. The laptop has two 256MB RAM modules installed, but registers only 256MB.

First of all, I removed the memory cover to find out if both memory modules are installed correctly. The laptop had two 256MB Kingston modules installed and they were seated properly.

When I started the laptop and entered the BIOS setup menu, I found that only one of the two memory modules is detected and the laptop registers only 256MB (262144KB) of RAM instead of 512MB (524288KB).
Just a side note. In the computer world 1MB=1024KB. That’s why 256MB=262144KB and 512MB=524288KB.

Ram Slot Suddenly Not Working Together

I tried reseating both memory modules but it didn’t help.
After that I tried installing both memory modules in both memory slots one by one and here’s what I found. The laptop worked absolutely fine when both memory modules were installed into the slot A, but failed to boot with both memory modules installed into the slot B.
Apparently, there is nothing wrong with the memory modules and the laptop has a faulty memory slot B. The memory slot is permanently soldered on the motherboard. If one of the slots fails you’ll have to replace the whole motherboard or use the laptop with only one working slot.
Buying a new motherboard for this older laptop wouldn’t make any sense because it’s too expensive, but the laptop is still in a good working condition except the faulty memory slot B, so I continued playing with that trying to find the solution.

I noticed that the laptop start normally with the memory module installed into the faulty slot if I slightly press on the module with my thumb. And this gave me an idea.

This guitar pick is going to fix my laptop. 🙂

I installed both RAM modules back into the slots and then placed the guitar pick over the module in the slot B as it shown on the picture.

I thought if I close the RAM door it will press on the guitar pick/memory module and it will have the same effect as pressing on the module with my thumb. And it worked!

Both memory modules were detected properly and the laptop registered all 512MB. After “the fix” I tested memory with Memtest86+ and the laptop passed the test.
I wouldn’t call it the best solution for fixing a faulty memory slot but in some cases it will work.

By the way, I didn’t charge the customer for this “repair”, he knows what is going on and how I “fixed” his problem.