- Sep 5, 2015
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Hi,
I recently started experiencing extremely slow performance on my laptop. Chrome would also display random error messages about failing to read memory addresses. This led me to believe something was wrong with the RAM so I ran the windows memory diagnostic tool. I have 2 RAM chips, one 8gb, and one 4gb. They ran fine for many months but now on the second pass of window's memory diagnostic I get a hardware fault error.
I tried to see if it was a specific chip so I tested one at a time and swapped their position. Each time i still got the same error and slow startup on windows. This led me to believe it might be the motherboard, but I wanted to test a bit more so I created a bootable USB drive with memtest86 on it and ran all the test with 4 passes (it ran for about 7 hours) and got no errors.
I also tried the diagnostic tool on my BIOS and it also did several memory tests but found no errors.
So my question is, could windows be right while the other two, more comprehensive, tests are wrong? I would have ignored window's result if I had not experienced (and continue to) all the symptoms of bad RAM. I am mostly wondering if it could be a driver or windows specific issue? I have a lot to backup so I don't want to do a clean install unless I absolutely have to (yes, I know). I also have not tried changing any timings or voltages, mostly because I don't know what to change to. I have read on the forums here that increasing voltage seems to be a general recommendation so if someone could point me to a guide I'd appreciate it.
I recently started experiencing extremely slow performance on my laptop. Chrome would also display random error messages about failing to read memory addresses. This led me to believe something was wrong with the RAM so I ran the windows memory diagnostic tool. I have 2 RAM chips, one 8gb, and one 4gb. They ran fine for many months but now on the second pass of window's memory diagnostic I get a hardware fault error.
I tried to see if it was a specific chip so I tested one at a time and swapped their position. Each time i still got the same error and slow startup on windows. This led me to believe it might be the motherboard, but I wanted to test a bit more so I created a bootable USB drive with memtest86 on it and ran all the test with 4 passes (it ran for about 7 hours) and got no errors.
I also tried the diagnostic tool on my BIOS and it also did several memory tests but found no errors.
So my question is, could windows be right while the other two, more comprehensive, tests are wrong? I would have ignored window's result if I had not experienced (and continue to) all the symptoms of bad RAM. I am mostly wondering if it could be a driver or windows specific issue? I have a lot to backup so I don't want to do a clean install unless I absolutely have to (yes, I know). I also have not tried changing any timings or voltages, mostly because I don't know what to change to. I have read on the forums here that increasing voltage seems to be a general recommendation so if someone could point me to a guide I'd appreciate it.
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