blue screen from new memory?

[Rulke]

I got some new memory for my computer and my wife's computer. Exact same stuff I have in them already (brand, size etc). Install went fine and both register as functional etc.

Anyway, later the same day she had a blue screen randomly appear while playing a game. Thought maybe it was the game but it just happened again while she was just browsing the web. The only difference with her comp is the memory. I haven't had bad memory in a long time but I thought I'd see problems with the installation and start up; pointing to a back stick or something. Can memory cause something like this?

[Jefe]

Yes.

[hey]

It's almost certainly the memory. Run memtest86 to be sure.

[Kerberoz]

Yep; go RMA it. Happens all the time.

(it's possible to have a bad memory slot, but that almost always results in it not showing up at all)

[Rulke]

Thanks all, I'll run memtest and go from there. Appreciated.

[Rulke]

Hookay, so I sent back the memory I thought was bad and Newegg sent me another pack. However nothing has changed >< A friend suggested perhaps the open slots had some slight corrosion on them so I cleaned them and tried again. Paying careful attention this time, I seems the system blue screen roughly every 30min. I was able to snap a quick pic of the error message. Any idea if this is still another bad memory stick? Or perhaps its a bad memory slot on her motherboard? I haven't yet tried taking out the 3 original good sticks and replacing them with the 3 new sticks to test yet (nervous that I might screw up her comp and then go from having a comp that works to a pile of crap..

[Coren]

Put the new stick in place of one of the good ones, and leave the potentially-bad slot open and/or leave the new one out and put one of her original good sticks in the potentially-bad slot. That should tell you what you want to know.

[bluefan]

If you're sure it's not the memory anymore, than:

I know with Windows XP, when the CPU or RAM got too hot, it BSOD.

A failing PSU could also lead to it. Unstable power is also a sign of BSOD.

Also a failing HDD. Test it too. Bad sectors can potentially crash the PC.

[xopher]

You guys are bad at troubleshooting. Stop errors actually mean something.

http://aumha.org/a/stop.php

It's your memory or one of the memory slots. Test each stick in the first slot. If it doesn't bluescreen on any of those, add one stick to the group til it blue screens and you'll know which stick it is.

Could be old memory if you're using any.

Also do not test those sticks in another machine. They could be the culprit. They could have shorted out the slot on the board if the slot is busted.