Bought new memory but i think its bad...

[TheSpy007]

Well i went to best buy and picked up a 512mb pc-2100 stick of crucial ram, it was on sale for $57 so i just had to get it. After i installed it i started getting alot of physical memory dump blue screen errors. I decided to run memtest, ive never ran memtest before so i dont know if it working right. But so far it says 0 Pass and over 1 million errors. I assume the stick is just bad. I have a 256mb stick of crucial ram thats also in the machine and never had a problem with it. So is the 512mb ram stick to blame? Thanks.

 

[TheSpy007]

Bump, the errors are now above 4 million and still 0 for Pass, is this test running right?

 

[fredtam]

Yeah I think you can safely say it is bad. Not only because of Memtest but you started having problems when you installed it. I am pretty sure Memtest is working correctly and it will take a while to get through one pass of all test. You could have your new memory in by then.

Edit: Also jerk the 512 out and leave the 256 and rerun Memtest.

 

[bjc112]

IF memtest reports ANY erros, its time for the RMA/return...

 

[Mday]

what motherboard do you have?

some crucial 512MB sticks are incompatible with nforce2 boards

 

[TheSpy007]

Originally posted by: bjc112
IF memtest reports ANY erros, its time for the RMA/return...

Well i took out the new ram and left my good 256mb stick in their and ran mem test and it found 219 errors, so i guess a few errors wont be that bad. But the 512mb stick had over 6 million.

Originally posted by: Mday
what motherboard do you have?

some crucial 512MB sticks are incompatible with nforce2 boards

I have a A7A266 mobo, its not even a nforce1. lol

 

[thorin]

1) Tell us your temps....if your CPU is over heating it can be passing bad/corrupt data.
2) Test the sticks one at a time.... (ie: Boot with only one installed and test it, then power down remove it install the other and test)

Thorin

 

[TheSpy007]

Originally posted by: thorin
1) Tell us your temps....if your CPU is over heating it can be passing bad/corrupt data.
2) Test the sticks one at a time.... (ie: Boot with only one installed and test it, then power down remove it install the other and test)

Thorin

1) Cpu temp is 40C and System temp is 24C. I have a Athlon Xp 2000+
2) My origional 256mb stick has 216 errors and the 512mb stick has over 6 million. I tested each seperatley.

 

[lorinser75]

The memory slot could also be the culprit.

Try moving the memory to a diff. slot, and see what happen.

 

[sniperruff]

better yet, try going to bestbuy B&M and do an exchange instead of RMAing, if you didn't cut the UPC for a rebate of some sort...

 

[TheSpy007]

Well i used some compressed air on the ram slots and put both ram sticks back in and then ram memtest again. I let it do all tests and it found no errors. I dont know what to do now, any memory checking program beside memtest?

Thanks for all your help.

 

[thorin]

There's DocMem but IIRC it runs in Windows and therefore has a much much much large section of base RAM that it can't check (where the OS is loaded).

Thorin

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: TheSpy007

Originally posted by: bjc112
IF memtest reports ANY erros, its time for the RMA/return...

Well i took out the new ram and left my good 256mb stick in their and ran mem test and it found 219 errors, so i guess a few errors wont be that bad. But the 512mb stick had over 6 million.

Originally posted by: Mday
what motherboard do you have?

some crucial 512MB sticks are incompatible with nforce2 boards

I have a A7A266 mobo, its not even a nforce1. lol

Even one error would be cause for concern - you should be able to run memtest86 for several passes and get 0 errors. You might be running the RAM at faster timings than it was rated for, or at the wrong voltage.