Upgrading RAM causes wireless to be unable to connect

I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop running Windows 7 64-bit. It had 3 GB of RAM, and then I upgraded it to 8 GB of RAM.

After the upgrade, the computer booted up and Task Manager showed that it was using 8 GB of RAM, but the wireless icon in the system tray indicated that it couldn't connect. I tried the Windows wireless troubleshooting feature, and it said that the wireless capability wasn't turned on. But there's no wireless on/off switch on this laptop. I tried restarting Windows and the wireless still couldn't connect. Also, the Task Manager showed a svchost.exe process taking up over 50% of the CPU and over 1 GB of RAM - I'm not sure what that was about.

So then I removed the 8 GB of RAM and put the old 3 GB back in. When Windows booted up, the wireless connected fine. That means I didn't accidentally disconnect any wires on the wireless adapter.

Any ideas why this laptop's wireless won't connect when it has 8 GB of RAM installed?

delerious said:

I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop...
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....there's no wireless on/off switch on this laptop.
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The wireless radio can be turned on/off with the F2 key per this document.

Try installing the wireless driver again (perhaps this is a newer driver too). Product Support | Dell US

I just downloaded and installed the latest wireless driver and then put the 8 GB back in, and now everything's working.

Kinda strange though, because looking in Device Manager, the wireless driver still has the 2009 date, so I was already running the latest driver before.