Can alt-tabbing corrupt RAM?

K

k083

New Member
Hello! I am having trouble with my computer, I think it might be my memory.

First, I have 2x 256MB of DDR 2700 RAM. I was getting all kinds of BSOD's, mostly suggesting CPU or RAM error. (BAD_POOL... IRQL_.....)

Then, I decided to buy some RAM, 2x 512MB DDR 3200. At first when I plugged it in, it was fine. I played a game of NBA Live and no troubles there. But, when I played Half Life 2, I alt-tabbed out of the game, and alt-tabbed back in. It took about 30 seconds to get back in the game. I think somewhere along the line something went wrong. And after 10 seconds of playing time, the computer suddently crashed making the looping scratching noise.

I ran memtest86 and got many errors on tests 5 and 7 :(.

Does anyone know if alt-tabbing in and out of the game might have corrupted the memory chips? Thanks!
 
I don't see why it would corrupt RAM. It's made to write/rewrite constantly so I wouldn't see how simply changing tasks would do anything. I would think a harddrive would be more prone to errors from alt-tabbing. I'm sure you've heard them grinding away, espcially if you don't have much RAM(probably virtual mem and such)

Send those suckers back. Most RAM comes with a lifetime warrenty
 
could try running the ram in another machine and running memtest again, that may narrow down the problem
 
Also with 512MB of ram, I don't suggest alt-tabbing a game like Half Life 2 or running anything else while running the game.
 
No, It would not corret your RAM. and he said he got 2 sticks of 512MB now to total 1GIG of 3200DDR. I wouldn;t suegstion alttabbing on most games anyways becuase most of mine have been to known to crash on reentery.
 
Thanks for your help guys!

I tested the memory chips one by one on my friend's computer. BTW, these are 2 512MB chips so it's 1 gig. Only one of them showed errors. But then, the chips showed up on her system as 504MB, she has an older system. Both chips reported errors on my system on memtest86. I think my system has gone bad :( It crashes all the time, with or without BSOD's.

Oh yea, the reason I was concerned with HL2 corrupting my RAM is that my computer was working fine with the new 2 512MB RAM sticks and after the alt-tabbing of HL2, it froze with the scratching noise. And now, with those same memory, I can barely do anything on my computer before it crashes.

Again, thanks for reading!
 
Update: I think it might be my system. Everytime I do tests in Memtest86 on my old 256MB sticks, different errors occur on different tests at different sizes of the memory. Sometimes, there might be many errors on test 3, and other times on test 6. If the RAM is corrupt, wouldn't it have the same errors at the same place? Thanks!

BTW, I just did another test on the 256MB stick, and there wasn't any errors. Everything is just so random.

Thanks for reading :)
 
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