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Is there a way to test RAM on a Windows 2008 R2 x64 machine?

I have 6GB of RAM, and I suspect one of my 4 sticks may be bad.

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    What sort of machine is that? A decent server will tell you if RAM is starting to throw too many errors. – John Gardeniers Feb 09 '10 at 19:45
  • The decent ones give you a nice panel error like "DIMM#3 is fried - Replace it!" (and the **really** nice (and expensive) ones let you do the replacement without shutting down, but I don't know any x86 ones like that, only IBM p- and i-series :-) – voretaq7 Feb 09 '10 at 20:36

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Unless you have a manufacturer-provided diagnostic tool (that you trust) you will probably need to take an outage window and run something like Memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/).

If you suspect bad RAM I would advise runing Memtest86 anyway regardless of what any manufacturer diagnostics say.

voretaq7
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    By preference I now use MemTest+ ( http://www.memtest.org/ ) it's got a bunch of changes that make it play better with newer hardware and doesn't bug out on some systems that give the original memtest heartburn. Looks and works the same though. – Helvick Feb 09 '10 at 20:18
  • Cool, I wasn't aware of MemTest+ -- Looks like a nice pile of enhancements :) – voretaq7 Feb 09 '10 at 20:34
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Windows Server 2008 (and Vista/7) have a built in memory testing tool. It requires a reboot. Type "memory" into the start menu and it will be one of the first returns.

Wesley
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I think that memtest is the best choice. The latest versions run on 64bits processors and are able to manage more than 4GB as well. Note: you cannot run tests with the OS up and running: you have to shutdown your box and boot the memtest live cd / usb.

Anyway I suggest, if merely possible, to plan an outage and perform a full memetest cycle for each ram module, separately.

This way you will be able to tell not only if your problem is related to the ram but which stick is the culprit too.

M

MariusPontmercy
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