RAM question

Slick (or anyone else that knows about these things) - been having a few computer problems lately. Keep getting blue screens of death with various messages (PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA, BAD_POOL_HEADER, MEMORY_MANAGEMENT and IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL are the ones I saw, not all at the same time, didn't always get time to write them down before it shut down). To start with, the computer would give me one of those messages, then shut down, restart, and work OK for a few hours and then go through the same again.

After a couple of days of that, it got to the point where it would shut down, try to restart, the light would come on, and it immediately shut down again after a couple of seconds, and would keep on and on retrying, eventually coming back on after a dozen or so attempts, running Auto Repair and working. Tried a system restore, no good. Eventually got to the stage yesterday where it tried restarting and kept cutting off straight away, must've done it about 60 times. Managed to get it to start in some kind of HP test mode, where it ran a diagnosis and told me the Memory Quick Check failed, on memory module 2 DIMM2.

Opened the case up, removed half a beagle's worth of fur which although not the cause of the problem, probably wasn't helping the situation much. There were 2 RAM cards (4GB each), couldn't tell which was number 2, so took one of them out, still had the same problem, put that one back in and took the other one out and it started perfectly first time.

So, to get to the point, my question is, would the problem have been with the RAM card itself (in which case presumably I can just buy a new one and put it in there), or is it possible the problem is with the slot rather than the card (in which case I don't really know what I'm doing and will have to get someone to look at it)? And presumably in the mean time there's no problem with using the PC with just one RAM card instead of 2, other than the fact my PC will be slower than before?

Have you tried the other RAM card in the slot which is occupied (and working) now? Surely that would tell you if it's the card or the slot?

My guess would be the card is more likely to fail than the slot, although I'm far from an expert.

No, for two reasons. 1) I'm not sure whether slot 1 needs to be the first one filled and it might cause some kind of problem having slot 2 filled, and slot 1 empty, and 2) I'm paranoid that if there's some kind of problem with the slot rather than the card, putting a healthy card in a corrupted slot might fuck it up and leave me with no working RAM.

Sorry RC only just seen this.

Did you get it sorted?

It might not even be the RAM tell the truth, if the PC is full of of fur then the thermal compound on the CPU may have broken down and needs redoing.

If the diagnosis is right and it is dimm2, just remove and reboot and see if you get the same fault, if the fault goes swap the RAM with DIMM1 and see what happens, process of elimination and you won't damage anything, PC's are pretty much solid and have a lot of built in safety features.

Yes, got it sorted in the end, cheers Slick. Must be the RAM, tried all possible combinations with the 2 RAM cards in the different slots, any combination involving the card originally in DIMM2 and the PC kept fucking about, with it left out and the other RAM card in either of the 2 slots, it worked fine. Just got to get around to buying another RAM now to replace the faulty one.