Memory

Not sure if I have placed this in the right area; if not if one of the moderators could move it to the correct location I would appreciate it.

May operating system is Windows XP Pro, sp3

Could someone please tell me the telltale signs of a stick of memory going bad? I have two sticks of memory, each 1gig. I don't know if it is me or if in fact my pc is slowing down. It seems as though it does not respond as quickly as it used to both online and offline. All scans, both installed and online indicate I am malware free. Latest scan was with MBAM in safe mode and it give me a clean bill of health.

And, is there a software that will give me a status on my installed memory.

I know just enough to get myself in trouble so if you reply try and keep it simple so I can understand. Thanking you in advance

John

 

check event viewer logs for errors and warnings. Slowdown is not a symptom of bad ram

 

+1

if you want to test your RAM anyway, you can download this freeware Memtest86+ and run it overnight.

 

signs of bad ram maybe be the more common following signs.
1.system will not boot
2.Random and frequent crashes.
3.memory faults errors.
4.programs Hang,system repeatedley hangs or stalls running memory intense programs.
5.Distorted graphics.

However your discription does not sound like bad ram.I had 1 stick go bad out of three and my pc wouldn't boot at all.I pulled out the bad ram and everything was fixed.

 

For XP I like Process Explorer. When you open it, it tells you how much memory is in use at the bottom of the screen. It'll say, Physical Usage xx%. There's also a graphic monitor at the top that shows memory use. It says "Physical Memory" when you hover the mouse pointer on it.

Slowdowns are commonly caused by stuff running in the background eating up memory. A lot of software likes to add itself to autostart when you install it, so if you're not monitoring it, you can accumulate many programs running in the background and not even know it. A full or nearly full hard disk can also slow you down unless you've run a file placement program to optimize the file system.

I'd check those things, and if none of them are issues, then you might look into some new memory, but more often than not, bad memory causes frequent crashes and errors rather than slowdown.

 

djohn is right on target.

number 5: the distorded graphics is what led me to my problem. Even though I thought it was video related from the beginning. It goes to show you when something is wrong and you think it is one thing it can be directed in another area where you wouldn't think it would be possible. My problem was ram.

In my specific case it was the board overvolting the ram and showed distorted graphics. Some programs would hang.

 

It would be interesting to know what is your security setup and if recently (since you've noticed the slowdown) you have installed any new/different application (slowdowns are often caused by conflicts).