Defective Memory

[Alphathree33]

I went out and bought a new hard drive which solved most of my problems from earlier.

But in doing so I've stumbled on another problem - not only did I have a crappy IBM 75 GXP, but I may also have defective memory.

I have 2 256 MB chips. It does register as 512 MB, so they are both working to some extent.

But according to the microsoft website, the error message I am receiving over and over again (faulty registry, restart will fix, so I restart, says its faulty, restart again) is as a result of bad memory.

The question becomes how do I find out if (a) it is bad memory and (b) if so, which of the two chips is it, if not both.

There is no particular problem I can recreate to check. I.e. take out one stick, try to induce problem, it doesn't happen, eureka it must be that stick.

Is there a program out there that tests for bad memory? Thanks.

 

[Vegito]

you can run some burn in programs in loop for like a few hours to see if the memory gives you good or bad results... "burnintest"

here

 

[Buk]

Clean the slots with canned air and check to see that they are properly seated.

Run your comp on only one stick for a while and see if it clears up the problem. If it does, then run it on the other stick and see what happens. You may be able to eliminate a bad stick this way. Or you can swap slots that the mem is in and see if that makes a difference.

Norton Systemworks has a memory tester you can try. There are several you can download - search for them with Google.

I had a stick that tested good with 'memtest' but bad with Norton - took it out and the stick was flawless in another system. Try to swap with a friend.

You can try several things before throwing $ at a problem.

HTH!

 

[Importtech]

despite what some people think its excellent...memtest86

 

[Sandor]

I think I have the same problem. If so, you can't run diagnostic programs because it keeps "fixing" the registry and rebooting, but never actually getting into Windows. I ended up reformatting everything and reinstalling an OS with only one stick or RAM. One stick gave me errors no matter what OS I tried to put in (SE, ME, win2k), the other one went smoothly. I figured the former stick was the bad one.

 

[Duvie]

Can you give us some system specs, as well as ram timings if oced or tweaking...

 

[Alphathree33]

1.1 GHz tbird
512 MB SDR RAM (2x256)... nothing special done to it. Infineon brand
Asus A7V
Geforce2 Ultra (Creative)
SBlive X-Gamer 5.1
assorted other stuff

 

[Alphathree33]

Oh and windows ME