BSOD, Random Periods - Testing Memory Guidance Required

[determined]

This may sound like a stupid question so I apologise before hand. I am currently having problems with my system and I keep getting a BSOD error.

When I restart my machine as I have a few HDD and a SDD installed it does not seem to boot from the correct drive so I have to constantly have to go through BIOS to fix this.

Now I am under the impression that my memory maybe at fault here, well I would think my motherboard but I need to test my memory first. So I ran memtest a while ago with ALL the memory sticks plugged in, but is this the way I should be testing my memory?

Should I only have installed one stick? or all sticks should be installed whilst conducting a memtest.

 

[badger906]

easiest way to test ram is to take out all bar 1 stick, turn it on, if it works swap for the next and so on.

If you have dodgy ram youll have one stick that will fail to boot.

 

[determined]

Appreciate your help.

 

[TVeblen]

This could be something as simple as a dying 3v battery on your motherboard. If you can't test it to see if it puts out a true 3 volts, then replace it, they are cheap. It will be a CR2032

Also check in Disk Management and make sure only one drive (the SSD, I assume) is marked as Active.

 

[determined]

I haven't done the memtest as of yet as I have some work still to do.

However in response to the active Volume advise, this is slightly worrying me.

There are some drive which I had setup in a RAID using FreeNAS, but the system went down and I couldn't put the two back together now, so I have just mounted it up in my Windows setup. There are a few HDD's that do not show up. Not in a rush to fix this, but the ACTIVE HDD is one which hasn't been formated to use.

E: is not something which I can use like any other drive just does shows up as a drive and is inaccessible.

If my drive is meant to boot of my SSD (c is this the only drive which should be Active?

 

[determined]

Just quick formatted the drive now, and the system reserve is now the active drive.

 

[essenbe]

Did you let the install disk format the drive. SSDs have to be aligned also. The installation Disk will do that for you, but if you format it yourself, you will have to align it.

 

[determined]

The windows CD? To format the drive? I did when I originally installed the OS onto the SSD. I need a refresh install soon, I am not sure about how to do the alignments. Is this a big task?

 

[essenbe]

If you let the install DVD do the alignment and format it will be correct.