significance of RAM errors?

[Robin Laing]

Dave Stevens wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a dual boot system with Windows and Linux on separate drives. After 
> some recent problems with booting I ran memtest86. In 40 hours more or less I 
> got about 600 memory errors. I don't like this but am somewhat at a loss to 
> understand how it compares to other systems or what consequences are likely 
> to stem from this. What I want to avoid is system instability and 
> unpredictable behaviour. Can anyone point me to more information about how to 
> interpret this result? or has anyone an opinion? 
> 
> Dave
> 

I have only had the experience of running testament once and it didn't 
find any errors with my system but I kept having issues that pointed to 
memory.  A new system that ran great with 4Gig but would crash with 8gig 
of RAM.  Same make of modules and it didn't matter what modules were in, 
system ran great with only two modules, not four.

I noticed that the version of memtest that I ran didn't show the correct 
configuration for the RAM.  I ended up downloading the latest memtest 
and this indicated the correct memory for my system.  No errors were 
indicated so I then looked at other options.  It turned out that the 
BIOS on my system had a few major updates so I installed them and the 
system has been stable.

Try to update the BIOS if possible and then try the memtest again it may 
make a difference.

-- 
Robin Laing