Strange Windows Errors? Maybe your memory is bad . . .

Of course you have a bad memory, but I'm talking about your computer's memory! The RAM is a small board or two that typically stand vertically off of the motherboard, and although there are no moving parts, failure of RAM is not as uncommon as I would hope, and the problems can look an aweful lot like hard drive failure -

• blue screens of death
• corrupted registry files (a good example of this is when you get the message: Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM)
• unexplained spontaneous reboots

Well, there's no good way from Windows to tell if you RAM has gone bad (or you bought bad RAM, or you got it with your new computer!)

However, if you go to www.memtest86.com and download the latest zipped .iso (pronounced eezo), extract it, and burn it to a CD using your favorite .iso burning tool (mine's here), then boot off your new CD, you'll have a very reliable, easy to use diagnostic that will help you decide if indeed your RAM has bit the big one.