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Question about bad RAM

G

gottogo99

Member
Hello, I'm in the process of getting my first ever build to work. What a nightmare. I've had numerous problems installing Windows and programs, getting "corrupt file" and CRC errors. Eventually I got most things running but could never unpack a large downloaded program file; it would always fail on a CRC error. (Dowload to a second PC unpacked fine on that PC, and to a third PC when burned to CDR on the second PC. CDR version failed on new PC.)

Grasping for answers, I tested each stick of RAM individually using Memtest-86. One passed 11 times, the other 12 before I figured that was enough. Then I tried unpacking the large program file with one stick of RAM, then the other. It would unpack with one but not the other, failing with a CRC error.

I've sent the RAM back and am waiting for replacement. My questions: 1) Are the programs I've installed off CD ok or potentially corrupted? 2) Are my downloaded programs ok or potentially corrupted? 3) Are the downloaded programs I've installed ok or potentially corrupted? 4) Are programs I've burned to CDR on the new PC for safekeeping ok or potentially corrupted?

I hope the answer to all 4 questions is "you're ok" because I don't want to reinstall Windows and everything else a third time, but if there is a problem I want to fix it now before I install remaining programs and transfer data.

thanks,

Dave
 
I think it is unlikely that bad RAM would corrupt anything on disk, a CRC error would indicate that the data is getting corrupted as it is getting loaded into RAM. Meaning that the data wasn't received correctly from the disk to the RAM, but nothing on the disk should've changed.
 
You're ok. Nothing is saved in memory permanently. It's volitile memory. It all gets blanked when you shut down anyway. Someday, we will have non-volitile ram.
 
To close this out, the replacement RAM seems to have fixed my problems. Everything appears ok except what I had burned to CDR using the bad RAM. With the new RAM, the downloaded and previously burned Nero 6.6 update had numerous corrupt files when unpacked. Unpacking it straight from the hard drive worked fine.

I reinstalled Windows for the second time just in case.

Dave
 
Everything is stored in RAM before it is written to disk so I'd say it is likely something corrupted is on your disk drive. Many programs don't even bother with a CRC check, and as you can see the CRC did fail. If it didn't check, it wouldn't have known the data was corrupt. That doesn't mean the file system structure is corrupt, but we can't totally rule that out either. After you get your new RAM I would run a chkdsk and then if you don't have any problems with your apps, don't worry about it. If any of the apps starts acting weird I would reinstall it.
 
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