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I just built a new computer. It has been behaving badly ever since I installed Windows. It all of a sudden started randomly blue screening at different times. I tried reinstalling Windows, it would bluescreen during installation. Sounded like a RAM issue to me.

I did a MemTest86 on all three sticks of RAM. It would freeze only 4 seconds in. I figured there was just a bad stick of RAM so I tested them one at a time. All three of them passed. If I tried testing 2 at a time, putting them in the same colored slot on the motherboard, the computer would restart a few percent into the test.

Looking at the motherboard and the slot numbers/colors, although with two sticks in currently, in number 2 and 4 (white slots), the computer would restart during the test but once in Windows, everything runs seemingly OK for the time being. If I put a single stick in either white slot, the computer seemingly runs OK once in Windows. However, if I put in a single stick in either of the blue slots (slot 1 or 3), the computer's "startup beep" would go off like a car alarm (beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep forever....). If I have all three sticks in such as slots 1, 2 and 3 (one blue and two whites), the test would freeze at 7% and the system would also have problems once in Windows as well. A lot of Explorer crashes primarily with the occasional BSOD.

What is going on here?

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    Read the manual for the motherboard. Especially the section where it talks about what types and specs of memory it supports, which combination of slot uses it supports, and in which order the slots have to be filled.
    – user12889
    Jul 23, 2010 at 0:01
  • Were the RAM sticks purchased as a single pack ? I'm guessing varying latencies of the sticks are causing crashes
    – Sathyajith Bhat ♦
    Jul 23, 2010 at 2:22
  • @Sathya yes they were
    – ryeguy
    Jul 23, 2010 at 3:39
  • are you overclocking?
    – NoCarrier
    Feb 4, 2011 at 1:17

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Upgrade your bios for start... Which mobo and ram dimms do you have?

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Start off by resetting the BIOS, to make sure it has the default settings and detects everything properly.

Make sure that they are correctly inserted, the clips at both sides should fit into the holes.

A last thing you could try is to flash the BIOS when you have booted with one memory module.

If everything fails I would suspect the motherboard to be broken.

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