RAM Problem?

For about two weeks now, my computer's been a little bogged down.

Every now and then when I'm surfing or whatever, the monitor will go black and I'll get a sterotypical 'alarm' sound from the internal sound card. I just reboot and everything is good after that (usually only happens once a night).

My boyfriend suggested it might be a RAM problem...I have a stick of 512 in there and just added a 128 stick. It had no problems for a day after inserting the new RAM, but it's back again...

What's going on?

 

Adding more RAM wont fix a RAM problem unless u remove the old RAM sticks (or the faulty one, at least.) If you want to see if you have faulty RAM, download a RAM diagnostic test, usually they will be an image file. Burn the contents to a CD or bootable device, and boot up in the RAM diagnostic. Run the test, and you will find out if you have faulty RAM. I believe majorgeeks here has a diagnostic, as does microsoft.

 

MemTest86+
http://www.memtest.org/

Floppy and CD utilities. When complete, you won't see any files on the media, but they are there. Just boot the machine with this and run it as long as you can afford to. If there are errors, run it on one memory module at a time to narrow down the possibilities. (ie; Remove all but one module.) You may have to set your bios boot device sequence to boot from the floppy or CDROM drive first.

Microsoft Memeory Tester
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

 

For complete clarity can you also confirm that your pc was not exihiting this symptom prior to you adding the extra ram. You are suggesting this but do not state it explicitly.

Cheers

 

Have you done a defrag and run a program like ccleaner on it in a while? Have you scanned your computer for any malware lately?

Just trying to get a little more detail on the problem.

Does it only happen when you're online?
Is it the same time each night or the same webpage?

 

Defragged recently and run ccleaner every night.
Last virus and malware scan turned up nothing.

My computer is always online,...so I'm not sure, but it doesn't only happen when I'm surfing if that's what you mean. Yet it doesn't happen unless I am doing something on the computer. If it's just sitting by itself it's fine.

I tried to see if it had anything to do with a certain time, cause I thought I noticed a pattern once, but I was wrong. Also doesn't seem to be with a certain webpage either...

@risk: it was showing problems prior to adding extra RAM, I thought adding the extra RAM might fix it.

I'll try out Memtest86+ and let you guys know what's up

Thanks!

 

Tell us about the

is it always the same? is it a series of beeps?

 

Yes always the same, a loud beep with a slightly lower one following it. Continues until I reboot

 

Ignore my previous post about the 'alarm'.

The alarm is actually a mid-range tone followed by a low-range tone, then a mid-range, and finally a high range before shutting off.