Disable parts of ram

[mahleumon]

I have used some ram testers to find out which locations are bad on a ram chip I have. I have isolated locations 876, 1004, and 1020 on chip four of my dual channel 4 x 256 megabytes ram setup.

I am looking for a way to stop Windows Xp from using only these locations and still being able to use that ram chip.

I have read about Badram

and that in Linux you can bypass some faulty spots on memory chips. I haven't found a way in Windows XP to do the same thing.

I have also read about the Boot.ini file and two switches in it.

/maxmem

/burnmemory

I think I can move the bad ram chip to slot four and insert /maxmem=877 into the Boot.ini file so that Windows only uses the first 877 of memory. Allowing me to keep the dual channel and the ram chip in place and use the 109 megabytes of memory that is good on that chip.

Questions

Question One. Is there a program out there for Windows XP like the Badram one for Linux?

Question Two. Is there a way to use a boot.ini switch like /maxmem and /burnmemory separately or maybe together to isolate only the three bad memory locations on that chip.

Question Three. Is there any other way to do this.

Hopefully someone knows and can help.

Thanks in advance.

mahleumon is online now Reply With Quote

[MHz]

Incorrect memory timng incompatible ram or other, can give you different read bad spots each time. Only good memory is a good stick of memory.

The switches you are mentioning, can also be set by MSConfig. This will not help you with bad ram. Bad ram memory corrupts data as it passes through it. This includes data during bootup, moving files from one drive to another, and so on.

The question is. Are you willing to try some illogical software fix, for a problematic hardware failure? I know I would not. But the choice is yours.

If it is not JEDEC standard ram, then compatibility with the motherboard could be a main issue of fault.

Check your timings. Use Memtest86 to test it. Do up to 50 passes. If it gives an error, then lose the ram.

[mahleumon]

Ok, well I've only did two passes on memtest, but three keep showing up. Stick four has locations 876, 1004, and 1020. I have dual channel setup, with 4 x 256. Would it be better to go single channel and keep the third 256 stick or take it out and run dual with only 512?

I have used \maxmem to disable the ram after location 876, so far its working fine, but I need more testing. If it doesn't work I can just take it out. I had been running 2 x 256 for a while and I knew this stick was bad, but I was just trying to do a work around. I can just take out the bad stick/sticks and keep the 512 won't hurt me any.

[purewaveform]

MHz is correct, you need to test the ram, I would just do it overnight, then you will have lots of test by the time you wake up, BUT, t is also important to test the RAM in another machine. Sometime you get chipsets that just dont like certain registers etc. The memory may work just fine in another computer. Remember it is not just the ram, could be a bad trace on the MB or any number of other reasons. Just test it in another machine as well.

Hopefully you can just return the ram, if it is older then put it in your linux machine and use badram.

BadRAM modifies the Kernel in a way that it knows what to do. It really isn't a very difficult project, but one that cannot be done in windows without the source code. Microsoft would have to do this, maybe citrix or someone else could but you would still need the source to windows. My guess is that microsoft is under the opinion (which is justified) that if you have a bad stick, just return it. As so much of their business is based on new sales.