Broken RAM? Can't prove it.

Posted by thespyguy@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 20 comments

At the office, we're not technically allowed to boot other operating system off USB drives. However, we do often need Ubuntu for some weird copies that we have to do, so it's not out of the ordinary.

Setup aside, now this is what happened. A machine that we have a very expensive warranty on was commonly failing to do processing tasks, even though it was the best machine in the office. I just did a memtest86 over the weekend and found the RAM was almost completely cooked. I reported this to my boss, but he explained to me that we can't officially say that we ran the test, even though he understands that it was necessary.

So now, technicians are coming to the office. We have to essentially pretend we have no idea what's wrong with it as they try basic Windows maintenance that won't work.

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grasib@reddit

I once had this strange Harddisk which intermittently stopped working.

The company which I had it from stated they would warranty it if they could confirm it's defect. If they couldn't, I had to pay a service fee.

So I just made sure it won't run anymore by running some very high voltage spikes trough it.

Can't you equally destroy that memory?

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mozman@reddit

Start button > type in "memory diagnostic ", and you can then run memory diagnostic tool on a restart, it will report bad RAM, problem solved.

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eragonawesome2@reddit

Go to the preboot menu and run the onboard diagnostics that should be on pretty much any bios newer than 2015.

Also, who is it that set that dumbass policy but didn't enable secure boot and a bios password?

Also if you're IT, you should be exempt from that policy if there's a valid business reason. If you're not IT, you need to get your boss to inform the company that you need this functionality to perform your job effectively and get it approved, otherwise it's a super easy "you violated policy" firing if the company ever decides to downsize your department

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joe_attaboy@reddit

You know what? let the techs deal with it. If they know what they're doing, they'll figure it out.

Three decades of IT work in literally every sector taught me one thing: when the "experts" show up, get out of the way.

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taxigrandpa@reddit

memtest can be unreliable when the system is overheating. Is this a 12 or 13 gen Intel? they have overheating issues that can kill a processor

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Mdayofearth@reddit

You mean 13th or 14th gen, since they are the same chips.

The 12th gen is a different design, and has different microcode attached to it.

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taxigrandpa@reddit

actually i wasn't talking about the microcode. i was talking about heat effecting the results of memtest

i meant 12th gen too. Many of the cooler used in that generation are not very efficient which can lead to overheating.

actually 10th gen have similar problems but i figured that would be too far back for anyone to still have a warranty on.

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Mdayofearth@reddit

Ah. I thought you meant the issues plaguing Intel 13th and 14th gen that also impacted the memory controller performance requiring memory clock speeds to be reduced.

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mnotgninnep@reddit

Are there any hardware diags you can run. Dell and Lenovo have it build into the uefi for example. I’ve recently had it though where the built in diags didn’t find an error and I had to get an updated version on a usb stick that did detect it so they could warranty it for me.

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syberghost@reddit

I believe you that the RAM is bad. I would have run the same test you did, I would have trusted the results, and this is statistically so likely to be the RAM being bad that I would also be comfortable reporting "the RAM is bad."

But TECHNICALLY, you don't know for sure that it's bad. There are other extremely unlikely possibilities, not even worth exploring in most cases, assuming you reseated the RAM. (which I am assuming, BTW.)

It's fine, if I was the technician you called in, I'd start over from scratch checking this, it's the right thing to do. I'd do this whether you told me you ran memtest86 or not. It's the right way to troubleshoot in this situation. If they eventually find it's the RAM and replace it, time wasn't wasted, the inefficiencies are safeguards against assumptions.

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