TIL a loose RAM stick can cause random blue screens that look like a failing hard drive

Spent 3 hours last week swapping drives and running chkdsk on a client's Dell in Austin before I noticed the RAM wasn't fully seated. Anyone else had a false alarm like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

faith1210d ago

Had a laptop from a buddy that kept crashing during video calls. Spent two days reinstalling drivers and swapping out the hard drive. Turned out one of the RAM slots was slightly bent. Pushed it back into place with a toothpick and it ran fine for another year. The blue screens were inconsistent too, like once an hour then nothing for three days. Classic RAM acting up.

avery_fox939d ago

Yeah, that's wild. I had a buddy with a desktop that would randomly crash when he plugged in his USB headset, of all things. He spent a weekend swapping out his sound card and updating every driver he could find. Turned out the front USB header on his motherboard was slightly loose, and just pushing the pins down with a flathead screwdriver fixed it completely. Those intermittent glitches (like yours with the RAM slot) are a nightmare to track down, man.