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Question Ram usage spikes to 99% then locks up pc, when practically doing nothing.

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AgentElephant

Apr 16, 2020
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Alright fellas i need help with an issue that has stumped me.

I bought new ram like 2 weeks ago, 16gb corsair vengeance 2400mhz. Works perfect, i game with absolutely no issues. Past couple days i've been having some lockup issues. I'll be browsing chrome, watching something on VLC and then randomly my pc starts stuttering, i go to check task manager and i see my ram usage is spiking, 50%, 70%, 85%, 98%, then itll hit 99% and start to spike the disc usage, then once those two hit 99% my system locks up. This has happened twice in a week, the second time it happened i monitored the processes closely, first, it showed that the resources were coming from Chrome, so i closed it, then it said it was coming from Photos, then it locked up, nothing stopped the spike. I end up having to restart the pc, then things are back to normal. Do i have a virus? is the ram faulty? i dont see how faulty ram spikes the usage though.
 
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try each individual stick using memtest86. if good, test them together. if no issues, it isn't the ram. any more than zero errors means it's bad, let it do four passes each and together.

avast isn't a good anti-virus either. Use Windows Defender and Malwarebytes at least.
 
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Mandark said:
try each individual stick using memtest86. if good, test them together. if no issues, it isn't the ram. any more than zero errors means it's bad, let it do four passes each and together.

avast isn't a good anti-virus either. Use Windows Defender and Malwarebytes at least.
Click to expand...
Just ran windows defender and it also came back clean. Think i should update bios? a bios update i missed says it has an update for " Intel Micro code for security vulnerabilities ".

Gonna wait to do the memtest because i don't have a usb handy, but could it be? memory diagnostic said they were fine. Also, are giant ram spikes a sign of faulty ram? i dont get blue screens/black screens and i have no trouble booting up.
 
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UPDATE: completed the first pass on memtest, 0 errors. My bios haven’t been updated since 2017, so I may update them, maybe my old bios aren’t playing well with the new windows updates?
 
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Bad news, on the 3rd pass I got 1 error on test 7. Super bummed, bought this kit on amazon a couple weeks ago... what a time to RMA something huh. Corsair Ram has a lifetime warranty correct?
 
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UPDATE 2: updated my bios and gpu driver, also ran memtest again afterwords and I got 1 error on the first out of 4 passes on test 8 (when I got an error on my 1st memtest it was test 7 on pass 3, so the error was not reproduced) the rest were clean. I also ran malwarebytes and it found malware on something I downloaded and adware in another, they’ve now been quarantined. Gonna wait to see if this ram spike incident occurs again and if it does I’m gonna have to RMA with amazon, though I’ve never heard of faulty ram caused giant ram spikes and then system freezing.
 
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So I just tested my old 8gb Corsair vengeance single channel stick on memtest, 4 passes and 0 errors, completely clean. My new ram that gets single errors on test 7 & 8 is 16gb dual channel. The difference between the two is that the one that passes good is single channel and runs at 2133mhz and the failing one is 16gb dual channel that runs at 2400mhz. Thinking maybe I’ll try lowering it to 2133mhz and run the test again tommorow, any thoughts? I’m kinda desperate for input because I’m new to all this stuff.
 
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