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Ram goes bad, why?

blckgrffn

blckgrffn

Diamond Member
I provide a tech service here on campus, and took a girls "dead" 1.6 p4 256 ddr ram gateway minitower, and for a decent sum of money & moved her to a 1700+ box and a fresh install of XP (legit, even! ;-). Well, I thought the mobo was dead in the Gateway, because I got no beeps or anything when I pulled ram/video card/etc. I thought about it, and stuck her DDR ram into the fresh box as I had a hunch that the mobo didn't die cleanly. Well, low and behold, after a complete fresh install of XP, installing SP2, the comp hangs, and then refuses to post. I take her ram out of the athlon box and put in some tried and true ram, the comp runs like a champ through the rest of the process and through multi hour stress test. So, I tried some good ram in the gateway, it boots up fine. I haven't tried putting that ram back into that Gateway to see if it will boot now that the ram is reseated (it ran fine for awhile in the Athlon box, after all) but the ram seems to be bad somehow.

What I want to know is if I put another stick in the same mobo/PS combo, will it die too? How could ram just up and die? Is it an indication of another problem? I would like not to lose more RAM to this little stinker if possible. She had a previous issue, and evidently Gateway replaced both the mobo and the vid card to fix the problem, but that was while she was under warranty.

The mobo is an intel chipset job without onboard video, but onboard everything else. I would really like to put as little money in as possible, but am open to replacing the mobo or PS if that seems to be the only solution.

Thanks for your time and any replies!
Nat
 
Well, the ram seems to be working back in the gateway, so I guess I wait until it refuses to post again, take out the RAM, repeat... any insight would be appreciated.
 
Originally posted by: blckgrffn
Yeah, I will try that as soon as I have an os on it. Thanks!

Can RAM just go bad like that though?
Click to expand...

Yep. When it goes, it tends to just go "pop" like that. I lost a stick of XMS3700 in that manner. No crashing, no instability, no nothing. Just suddenly, WHAM, hardlock, reboot, constant tone from the PC speaker. 😛

- M4H
 
It just seems to come and go - I have had ram go in the not quite entertaining manner that you described, but never this works now but not later. Did you ruin any other RAM with the setup that ate your corsair?
 
Originally posted by: blckgrffn
It just seems to come and go - I have had ram go in the not quite entertaining manner that you described, but never this works now but not later. Did you ruin any other RAM with the setup that ate your corsair?
Click to expand...

Nope, just the one stick went. The other identical DIMM was just fine. 😕

- M4H
 
Well, the memory is still working without reseating it. Beats me what is going on. Computer will be sold soon 🙂
 
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