Mailing List Archive: RAM Issues

RAM Issues

Oct 28, 2004, 8:46 AM

Post #1 of 4 (229 views)

So my system has been crashing about every fourteen days for the past
two months. Today, it happened again, so I took the advice of many and
checked my RAM. I have two sticks of 256M DDR PC2100. Let's call them
a and b, with a in the first bank and b in the second. Here's what
happened.

1. BIOS error.
2. Took out b, started nicely.
3. Put b back in, BIOS error
4. Took b out, started nicely
5. Put b back in, BIOS error.
6. Switched a and b (so both are in now, but b is in the first bank and
a is in the second). Now it starts up normally.

What I'm wondering is if I fixed my problem by switching the RAM to the
other bank.

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Re: RAM Issues [ In reply to ]

alextux at panafonet

Oct 28, 2004, 1:53 PM

Post #2 of 4 (205 views)

Permalink

blkmage wrote:
> So my system has been crashing about every fourteen days for the past
> two months. Today, it happened again, so I took the advice of many and
> checked my RAM. I have two sticks of 256M DDR PC2100. Let's call them
> a and b, with a in the first bank and b in the second. Here's what
> happened.
>
> 1. BIOS error.
> 2. Took out b, started nicely.
> 3. Put b back in, BIOS error
> 4. Took b out, started nicely
> 5. Put b back in, BIOS error.
> 6. Switched a and b (so both are in now, but b is in the first bank and
> a is in the second). Now it starts up normally.
>
> What I'm wondering is if I fixed my problem by switching the RAM to the
> other bank.

No you didn fix it but you found out what the problem is.
It's the second RAM stick thats propably bad.
When your machine boots it doesn fill up all the first 256MB so it
doesn't use the second stick
and you don't get errors.
Run memtest86 (www.memtest86.com) to make sure.

Cheers!

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Re: RAM Issues [ In reply to ]

alextux at panafonet

Oct 28, 2004, 1:56 PM

Post #3 of 4 (208 views)

Permalink

Re: RAM Issues [ In reply to ]

stimpy56 at bellsouth

Oct 29, 2004, 4:57 AM

Post #4 of 4 (206 views)

Permalink

blkmage wrote:

> So my system has been crashing about every fourteen days for the past
> two months. Today, it happened again, so I took the advice of many and
> checked my RAM. I have two sticks of 256M DDR PC2100. Let's call them
> a and b, with a in the first bank and b in the second. Here's what
> happened.
>
> 1. BIOS error.
> 2. Took out b, started nicely.
> 3. Put b back in, BIOS error
> 4. Took b out, started nicely
> 5. Put b back in, BIOS error.
> 6. Switched a and b (so both are in now, but b is in the first bank and
> a is in the second). Now it starts up normally.
>
> What I'm wondering is if I fixed my problem by switching the RAM to the
> other bank.
>
>
I started having the same problems with my RAM (Corsair Value Select
1GB), and found that one stick was bad.
How I found out was trying to complile programs, they were all
segfaulting. I would never have known under XP
-I have a dual-boot sys-Thanks to Gentoo just running it told me of bad
hardware.
P.S. I love the sig

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Edward A Mihalow Jr prr56@bellsouth.net
Mihalow Consulting
www.mihalowconsulting.com
Gentoo Linux! Registered Linux User#225662

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