[vox-tech] When RAM goes bad...

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Peter Jay Salzman (p at dirac.org):

> I suspect one of my machines has bad RAM.
[...]
> Everything on both OS's points to bad RAM.  The RAM is only 2 or 3 years
> old.  Is it unheard of for RAM to die that quickly?

It's heard of, particularly if you have (1) weak power supplies, (2)
heat problems, or (3) both.  Gamer boxes often _do_ have both.  

> I've never run memtest86 before, but I got it running right now.  Aptitude
> got it, made a boot floppy and it's running.  Looks like it may take awhile.

Run memtest at least overnight.  The short runs most often don't catch
bad RAM sticks, but the more-extensive runs most often do.

> I've never come across this piece of bad luck before.  Any other tools to
> look at?  I only knew of memtest86 from this mailing list.

There are actually two forks of memtest86; I believe the other's called
memtest86+ .