Windows 7: Possible Ram issue with Win7 install?

Hey guys,

A little history here first:

I recently upgraded my motherboard, processor, and ram in my computer. I kept my old hard drive but loaded a fresh copy of Windows 7 x64 onto it. The installation went smoothly and I didn't notice any issues until about a week later when I started having windows crash to blue screen. I restarted my computer and it would work okay for maybe 6 to 8 hours then crash again. Only other thing I noticed was Firefox crashing constantly but I thought at the time that it was just a problem with Firefox.

I decided to reload windows completely onto it thinking it a problem with the OS. I tried numerous times to load it but it kept stoping at extracting files and giving me an error message saying files corrupt or missing, (I don't remember the exact message.) I even tried a brand new hard drive and got the same message.

I did a little research online and tried a few things with no luck, until I read about reducing the ram. I thought that it would never work but sure enough it did. I took out one of my two sticks of 4gb ram cards and it loaded smoothly no hiccups at all. It seems to be running smoothly so far and I haven't put the ram stick back in yet until I do some more testing.

I know it's possible that my ram is bad, but is it possible that too much ram could have interfered with the installation of windows? I'm not real computer savvy, I just know enough to get myself in trouble. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Or the ram is bad or its incompatible with your motherboard, get memtest and run it for some loops to discart errors.

It's a common install issue with Windows 7, requiring removing all but 2gb of RAM to complete installation.

In your case I would thoroughly test the RAM following Jonathan's steps given here to test both RAM and slots: RAM - Test with Memtest86+

Firefox problems could be related but also are often solved by reinstalling or upgrading Flashplayer upon which it is heavily dependent.

I would then work through these troubleshooting steps to look for repeat errors in logs, fully utilize System Resources, complete hardware testing until you winnow out the problems.

ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI has a uEFI BIOS.

How to install Windows 64 bit on a uEFI BIOS:
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with

Also check the uEFT BIOS setup, there are a few video's on Asrock website.

Okay, I ran Memtest86 and turns out I do have a bad memory card. Thanks for your help.