Good ram acting like bad ram.

911aaron

New Member
While using my computer, the graphics on the screen became discolored and my system basically froze. When I tried to reboot, everything became discolored and my computer would load past the start up screen. I ran a test using the Windows 7 disk and found out that one of my 2 memory sticks is faulty. So I took the faulty stick out, and I've been able to post twice out of my 15 attempts with my one good stick of ram. The other 13 times, it would act like my other faulty ram and would not boot. I've moved the good stick of ram into other slots, but they all end in the same result.

What do you think is the problem and how can I correct it?
 
Download memtest from here:

http://www.memtest.org/download/4.10/memtest86+-4.10.iso.zip

You want to extract it, and burn the .ISO file to a disc as an image. If you don't have a disc burning program that can do this, you can download CDBurnerXP from here:

http://cdburnerxp.se/

which will do it. Once you have Made your CD, reboot and boot from it, and let it run with both sticks in. If any errors come up, you can say (nearly) for certain that your memory is the issue. If the errors appear, take out 1 stick, and test again. Swap the sticks around so you have only 1 stick in again, but the other one this time, and test again.

If both come up with errors, it will be that either both are bad, the settings are wrong, or your motherboard is having issues.

If in all 3 scenarios you are getting errors, change the DIMM slots that you are putting the memory in and test again, it may be that your memory doesn't like certain slots.

Finally, if you are having errors with both, go into the BIOS and make sure that all of the settings for your memory are right (timings, frequency and voltage). Don't set them on auto because a lot of BIOSes don't set the voltage to what it should be when set to auto, it will set it to a lower value, which can very easily cause instability like you are seeing
 
Back
Top