Reinstall Windows 7 after replacing defective memory?

[CrimsonWolf]

Last week I upgraded my computer with an i7-3770K, and Intel DZ77GA-70K motherboard, and a Corsair 4x4GB Vengeance Blue LP 1600mhz PC3-12800 memory kit. Everything is at stock. After install everything looked good for a couple days and it passed several runs of IntelBurnTest at the 4GB setting.

Well, since then I've had two BSODs. I ran IntelBurnTest testing 14 GB and it failed at the second run. Then I ran memtest86+ and it failed right off the bat. I pulled sticks one by one until I found the culprit. After keeping that one out memtest86+ was fine.

The computer's been crunching Rosetta@home and looking back at my results, out of 250+ successful work units, 3 had compute errors where they ran fine on another computer. Also, other than those two BSODs, there have been no other crashes or unusual behavior. I've ordered a new memory kit and will return the old one.

Now I'm paranoid about having installed Windows with defective memory. Normally I'd just wipe the drive and start over but I'm extremely busy right now and would rather not have to do this. I'm tempted to take the wait and see approach given the relative infrequency of the obvious glitches the memory caused. What say you, AT? Any experience with this?

 

[corkyg]

I only consider reinstalling when the current installation does not work right.

 

[hhhd1]

I would re-install, you do not know what might have happen during installation, some files might have got corrupted while copying, and you will not notice until running the specific file affected, .. which you won't know which one.

 

[MontyAC]

To play it safe, I also would go for a reinstall.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I had bad memory when I did a windows install. GSkill gave me an RMA and the new memory worked flawless and I never reinstalled.

 

[Emulex]

Yes re-install. What possible reason would you have to not reinstall?

ECC FTW 🙂

 

[mikeymikec]

Yes re-install. What possible reason would you have to not reinstall?

ECC FTW 🙂

One might assume that people have more useful things to do with their time?

If the OP would like a bit of reassurance about his current Windows installation, do SFC /SCANNOW at an admin console. I would also say that if the 100-odd Windows Updates that need to go on Win7 SP1 go on without any problems (with the exception of IE8 patches when IE9 was installed during the same updating session), that's a fairly indicator of Windows installation health.

If on the other hand it had acted oddly during the install and that was later found to be due to dodgy memory (if setup kept complaining that a file couldn't be found or a copy failed, for example), reinstalling might be a good idea.

 

[CrimsonWolf]

Thanks for all the feedback, especially on the sfc /scannow tip. I ran that and it didn't find any integrity violations. Everything else has been good in the last week with the new memory so I'll just stick with this install.