Ok so far. One stick is good. One is bad. 99% sure it's bad, the only way it wouldn't be bad is if whatever was really causing the problem caused the error both times i ran memtest. I also ran the memtest in different slots to be sure. Can't run the tests in slots 3 or 4 because the computer won't boot with out slots 1 or 2 taken up.
Good steps, and nicely done. Once you have the good RAM in, run the disk check again. I imagine there are still some hard disk errors based on the message you were getting from system maintenance.
Thanks. I'm done with troubleshooting for today/tonight. 5 hours is about my maximum time for fixing computer issues. Also figured out it was my USB external drives causing a slow boot (from 4-7 minutes to about 1 minute). Heard I can make changes in the BIOS to fix that but... I don't want to mess with BIOS again.
Thanks for you help. It's encouraging knowing I have someone I can look to for answers.
You're welcome. Glad to provide some level of comfort. :)
Yes, you can change the boot order in the BIOS so the USB drives are after the hard drives. Depending on how your BIOS works, this may not resolve it completely because the BIOS still may see external hard drives as hard drives. Up to you whether it is worth it to change the boot order.
So I've had 0 blue screens since I removed the bad stick of RAM. I still need to run a chkdsk, but have been holding off just to see if there were going to be anymore blue screens because I didn't want to get one in the middle of a chkdsk again. My BIOS is set to boot for USB last. I read that "boot from USB" had to be turned off completely in order to get a faster boot, but some people said that doing that can give you problems with your USB keyboard and USB mouse.
Glad to hear the system has been more stable. I would still recommend running the disk check once you are comfortable doing so again. :)
I agree that it may not be a good idea to disable USB through the BIOS if you have a USB mouse and/or keyboard.
So I did a chkdsk and no bad sectors were found but it said it failed to transfer the log to event viewer - status 50. I read that it might be because I ran the command prompt from a repair disc.
Also, the RAM timings and frequencies fixed themselves. IDK.
Disk check will not be able to transfer the logs run from a repair disc. If you had sectors that were fixed, you will need to run the disk check again until it finds no problems. You may also want to consider backing up the data and replacing your hard disk since bad sectors indicate the beginnings of possible hard disk failure.
At the very least, keep your data backed up over the next several weeks, and be diligent about it. Run disk check once a week, and see if it finds bad sectors again. If it finds more in the next few weeks, that would indicate the hard disk is failing.
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