Troubleshoot Bad RAM Modules with MemTest86+ - hendersonburses

Think you mightiness birth a bad Wa module in your PC? Freeware usefulness MemTest86+ will run a memory characteristic to help you find out. Before I explain more, a true story…

A couple of days agone my laptop froze up in a shivery way: the covert turned into a mosaic of lines, boxes, and other visual oddities. I powered down, rebooted, and got back to lic–only to encounter the Sami lockup about 20 minutes later. Uh-Buckeye State.

This wasn't just about Windows glitch Oregon malware transmission, which would have resulted in the usual error messages or outlandish system behavior. No, this was virtually certainly a hardware problem. The laptop dubitable was a pair off years old, and IT had banged around a fair bit inside my backpack. Maybe the screen was starting to go?

Then I remembered that just a duad weeks earlier, I'd installed a new RAM faculty, raising the total system memory from 2GB to 4GB. Aha, I thought, that has to be it: bad RAM.

My original troubleshooting footfall was to slay the new module, then run the system and see if it bolted up again. It didn't. That's when I decided to make MemTest86+, to help oneself me determine if the new module was indeed faulty.

In the old years, functional MemTest86+ meant burning IT to a blank CD and booting the system from information technology–a huge harry whatever way you slice information technology, and a potentially ineffective solution for laptops that lack optical drives.

As luck would have it, there's at once a scoot-drive version that's a snap to install and use. Just find some old drive (size up doesn't matter; the utility is all of 125K), then download and run the "Auto-installer for USB Key." Do note that this will require wiping the drive, so make in for you don't own anything key along it.

Then antitrust reboot your Microcomputer with the news bulletin drive inserted. (You may need to hit the BIOS or load a boot menu at startup to make a point the system boots from the drive away.) MemTest86+ will start examination at once, and report any errors it finds. (The smooth suite of tests can assume a while to fill in.)

MemTest ISN't the about easy utility along the planet (a whole lot of the data and commands are Greek to Pine Tree State), but in the end it give notice answer the question of whether OR non you have incompetent RAM. If you practice, it's a very likely explanation for frequent Blue Screens of End and other arrangement glitches.

Interestingly, MemTest launch no more errors in my RAM. And ever since reinstalling the unaccustomed RAM module, the system hasn't crashed again. So I now think that the faculty wasn't properly seated the best metre, or perhaps got nudged loose by all my jostle. Time bequeath tell.

Tributary Editor in chief Rick Broida writes about business and consumer technology. Ask for facilitate with your PC hassles at hasslefree@pcworld.com, or try the treasure trove of helpful folks in the PC World Community Forums . Sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newssheet e-mailed to you each week.