View Full Version : How bad is BAD RAM?
I just ran memtest and there was a few errors in my ram within just a few minutes of running it. My laptop has also been crashing a lot more recently, can ram that's turning bad cause this? It'll even reboot several times during the initial boot stage. Also is there a way to tell which ram stick is bad without the standard take one out and see which one works?
The blue screen that I get is also complete jibberish.
BigPopov
10-08-2008, 09:23 AM
Yes that's bad RAM. Standard trial and error, take one out and see if it works.
If you find no errors on the good stick and it still boot loops, download Seatools. It's a free program by Seagate to check the surface of the hard drive. (blue screen = usually bad ram, windows boot looping w/ no blue screen = usually bad HD)
eswat
10-08-2008, 09:39 AM
Yup. Bad RAM is very bad since it can make anything you do on your PC unstable or produce undesirable results. Can't say for certain if it's causing your crashes, but it's a good chance given the errors memtest86 found.
I'm not of any other method of finding the stick with the errors other than physically taking one out and testing each of them.
I took it out and it's not looping at bootup anymore. I also noticed it's going a bit faster DESPITE having HALF the ram now. It kind of sucks that I lost my 4 gb of ram now and am down to 2.
BigPopov
10-08-2008, 06:24 PM
Yeah not much you can do about the old one.
Buy a replacement from newegg, 2GB should be like $35. DDR2 RAM can be mixed (but the lowest speed stick will dictate how fast all of the sticks run)
Yeah not much you can do about the old one.
Buy a replacement from newegg, 2GB should be like $35. DDR2 RAM can be mixed (but the lowest speed stick will dictate how fast all of the sticks run)
This is what happens when I get generic memory. At least one still works and I can put my old 512 mb back in. Windows only read about 3 gb of that memory anyways.