Ram upgrade D255 (N450)

Hi all, long time reader first time poster here

My wife has a low end D255 (the AOD255-2DQkk specifically with N450 processor and Windows 7 Starter) and it's very sluggish doing absolutely anything at all so I want to upgrade it to 2gb ram. Through the Crucial website I know which ram it supports (DDR2) and through various videos I know how to physically install it in the machine.

My question is will Windows 7 Starter recognise the 2gb or will I be forced to use that darned Anytime Upgrade to get to Windows 7 Home Premium before the 2gb will work?

The acer website suggests that this Windows 7 Starter will only support 1gb ram (possibly to encourage people to spend their hard earned money on Home Premium) where as MS themselves suggest that Windows 7 Starter can use a max of 2gb.

As a side note and kind of preempting some posts I don't have any xp install disks to downgrade her Windows 7 Starter, and my wife is against using any dostro of linux, even though I use ubuntu.

Edit: ...and I haven't bought the ram yet so can't pop it in and see if it works

Many thanks

 

I have a 532h that came with Windows 7 Starter and 1 Gig of ram. I upgraded to 2 Gigs and it was immediately recognized in Device Manager. So Windows 7 starter should not be a problem.
Of interest, I found a deal on Buy.com that gave me 3 Windows 7 license upgrades to Home Premium for only $99. I had 2 friends with netbooks who wanted to upgrade so our cost to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium ended up only costing us $33 each.
Google Windows 7 Family Upgrade Pack and I suspect you might find a similar deal. You can also upgrade from Vista or XP with the same deal.

 

Thanks for the suggestion nestone. I honestly hadn't thought about the family upgrade pack because all the "official" documentation that I've glanced over only specifies that it's for use from XP/Vista to 7 Home Premium. It doesn't mention Windows 7 Starter at all, which is why I was looking at having to spend £50 for the anytime upgrade. But if you've used it, then it clearly works for W7 Starter too.
I think I'm going to take a leap of faith and buy the 2gb stick of ram for use with W7 Starter, then if that doesn't work
I'll see who else I know is willing to share the cost of the family pack.
I really hope that Acer haven't done any black magic on this laptop restricting it to 1gb ram with Windows 7 Starter because I want to avoid making a £20 upgrade (ram only) into a £50 upgrade (ram and our share of the family pack upgrade).
Cheers

 

I don't think Acer has performed any "black magic." I note that most manufacturers of netbooks claim RAM is limited to 1 GIG. As I recall, Mircosoft was offering the Windows 7 Starter to the various manufacturers at a low cost with the requirement that the companies selling the netbooks sell with no more than one gig of RAM so not to poach too many sales of laptops. The hardware of these netbooks clearly support 2 gigs of RAM. I feel confident that your Acer will recognize the 2 gig stick of ram with Windows 7 Starter. Mine certainly did. I also have an old AOA150 that I have fitted with 1.5 gigs of RAM. The "problem" is this netbook came with 512k of RAM on the motherboard. The chip set recognizes 2 gigs of RAM but no more. As a result, one is limited to a 1 gig stick resulting in a max of 1.5 gigs of RAM. I've also installed windows 7 Home Premium on this machine. I upgraded from Windows XP.

 

One more thing I forgot to mention. When I upgraded from Windows Starter to Home Premium, I simply had to enter the key code from the Family Upgrade Package in the "Windows Anytime Upgrade" program already installed on the net book. So, it's apparent that Windows Starter simply blocks the Home Premium features that must already be on the hard drive. In other words, you don't have to have an external DVD player or a flash drive to do the upgrade. Just enter the key code, follow the prompts and you have all the Home Premium features upon a reboot.
To find the Windows Anytime Upgrade program, start the Windows Update from programs and look in the lower left corner of your screen and click on "Windows Anytime Upgrade."