Memory Weirdness

[guitarchick]

So I found out why my computer was randomly freezing when I moved it or just whenever it felt like. My dad added an exra 4GB of RAM to make 8GB I think. Anyway, I took that out and now it works fine. So why would my computer do this or cause it to dump memory, ie have its pansy ass blue screen and then restart?

 

If theres extra space for it, shouldn't the computer work fine with it in it?

Anyone else have some ideas?

[Crusader]

the ram might be defective or you have the wrong voltages set.

 

ideally, your ram should all be the same brand, model, and size (GBs).

[ToadMan]

Yeah, a blue screen where swapping out the RAM fixes the issue is indicative of a memory defect or configuration issue. The computer doesn't have anyway of knowing if DRAM corrupts (well, this is true enough for this discussion), so all computers run on the assumption that anything put in RAM doesn't change accept by normal ways. If data gets corrupted, the system can, and will, try to use what is in that memory blindly. If that means that instead of it getting valid instructions, it gets invalid ones, then it crashes. A memory corruption is only recoverable sometimes (the parameters are kinda complex).

 

Anton is right, common corruption issues come up when two memory chips are mis-matched (different brand), the settings are wrong (voltage, and frequency... but frequency is usually self scaling), or there is a plain old fashioned broken part.

[guitarchick]

So how do I find out what voltage they are set at?

Both are the same brand etc.

[ToadMan]

That's usually a nitty gritty BIOS thing... I dunno if you even need to worry about it anymore. Maybe on PC's...

[Crusader]

if its the same brand, etc. i don't think you'd need to change the voltage settings then. the ram might be faulty or was not put in snug enough?

 

try putting the ram back in and making sure you apply pressure to both corners of the ram when you put it in.

[ToadMan]

Ram it in!

[saturnine]

are you running a 64-bit operating system? if not, you won't be using 8gb of ram.