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Faulty RAM it seems

  • 02-03-2013 5:22pm
    #1
    Champ
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 677 ✭✭✭


    Hi all,
    I don't have much experience diagnosing RAM and didn't have access to external resources like memtest86 at the time but here's the situation.

    A Win7 machine behaves fine for the most part bar the very rare BSOD, app crash or Windows explorer has stopped responding error.

    I decided to try to get down to the bottom of this and made use of Win7's own memory diagnostic tool.

    -Ran it and problems are reported within the first minute of the test.
    -Went to the BIOS and made sure all the defaults are loaded, reran the mem test and it fails again pretty fast.
    -The RAM configuration is 2 x 4GB.
    -Remove stick B but leave stick A, the test still fails.
    -Remove stick A and put stick B in stick A's place and the test passes.

    (A) That's enough investigating to conclude stick A is faulty and time to get new RAM?
    (B) Probably not advised to mix up different RAM brands so probably best to dispose of stick B (shame since it seems okay) at the same time as replacing stick A?
    (C) Any recommended brands (current RAM came from gskill)? I'm not a performance fanatic, I just want reliability and generally lower power consumption (and thus heat).


Comments

  • #2
    Torqay
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,835 ✭✭✭Torqay


    Champ wrote: »
    That's enough investigating to conclude stick A is faulty and time to get new RAM?

    No, that's jumping to conclusions. You want to test the memory independently from the operating system.
    Champ wrote: »
    I don't have much experience diagnosing RAM and didn't have access to external resources like memtest86

    What you mean, you don't have access to memtest86+? Run Memtest 86+ from bootable CD or USB stick. Let it run over night. No experience is required other than creating a CD from a disk image and finding the boot options menu. ;)


  • #3
    yoyo
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 11,017 Mod ✭✭✭✭yoyo


    You can get Memtest86+ on the UltimateBootCD (a very handy bootable disk everyone should have to diagnose computer problems :) ) and run it for a while, testing each stick independently. Memory test failures don't automatically mean faulty hardware, incorrectly configured RAM in the bios could cause a memory test to fail also, although in this case it does sound like you have a faulty module

    Nick

    My Beer Glass collection site 🍺

    My Irish Callcards site



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