I recently upgraded from 512MB to 1.2GB of memory. Ever since then I have been getting "the memory could not be "read" errors. I suspect that there might be a problem with the chip itself but the memory test (memtest86) I did revealed nothing.

The error always appears like this:

The instruction (first address) referenced memory at (second address). The memory could not be "read". Click on OK to terminate the program

These are the programs, first and second memory address that were referenced in the last four errors I got:

winword.exe 0x6061fdc3 0x00000000

firefox.exe 0x6061fdc3 0x00000000

winword.exe 0x6061fdc3 0x00000000

winword.exe 0x6061fdc3 0x00000000

rainlender.exe 0x6061fdc3 0x00000000

As you can see, there is a distinct pattern. What could be the problem? What can I do to fix it?

Sounds like a bum RAM chip. You could see if you can return it for another stick of RAM (if you bought retail).

its had to be the ram. how long did you run memtest for? try to run it through the whole night.

A logical assumption except I already did a memtest and passed. Additionally, I learned later, a program can't assign a value to the memory address 0x00000000 anyway because it's part of the protected memory address range. So memory wasn't the problem.

I did figure out what it was: the printer. For some reason Office 2000 has this quirk where it will crash if the default printer is a network printer and not connected. Before I had this problem back in the days of Windows 2000, but last time it reported an error with a library (which turned out to be a HP printer library, so I was easy able to resolve the problem).

I had it set to a network printer by default (a big no no I guess) and instead of the nice error with a .dll I get a mysterious memory error. But I fixed the problem, just added a new non-network printer and set that to default.

I guess I threw you off with the upgrading the memory part. I upgraded the memory around the time I changed the printer configuration.

Edited September 30, 200520 yr by I_Broke_My_MHZ