Z70VA Ram Prob!! PLS HELP!!

Ok I installed my second gig of ram in the underside of the z70va about 2months ago. Its is OCZ PC2-4200 DDR2-533 CL4-4-4-8 the same as what is under the keyboard. Now just today the computer stalled. I rebooted ani got an error black screen before entering windows saying that windows could not boot file was corrupt. System/driver/NTHS or something of that sort i cant remember and it told me to use the recovery console. So i start up the pc and boot from windows cd. Its starts loading files then i get and error pdsetup. (something) error 4 and setup could not complete for me to repair. So i read that i should remove ram and see that. SO first i remove the ram from the underside of the keyboard the new stick. Boom everything works good. Now can i determine that this stick of ram is faulty?? Or is it the slot that its inserted in that faulty? Should i remove the other stick and replace it with this one under the keyboard to make sure?? How do i do that?? Could it be anything else??? Help me out guys before i send it back to OCZ for the lifetime warranty (dont want to send it back and it be fine and it be something ese). THanks in advance

 

Leave both sticks in and run memtest.

http://www.memtest.org/
Download the ISO and burn it to a CD. Boot from the CD.

Let it run at least one full pass or until the first error shows up.

 

ill give it a try

 

Ok so heres the status so far. I reinstalled the second stick of ram and ran the test. It made it 10% into first test (0% of total test) and stalled tried again same thing. Took out that stick and now its running the test with the 1 stick under the keyboard part of the notebook. So far with that stick its 12% through the entire test and has 2 errors. So what do these errors mean? That this stick of ram is bad? What about the other one that apparently is stalling the test is that one bad or just conflicting with the other one? What should i do thanks in advance.

 

hmmm another wierd thing i noticed when i was running the memtest with the single stick is that FSB is 4-4-4-12 when what i bought when the notebook was assembled was supposed to be OCZ 4-4-4-8. The gave me the box for the OCZ 4-4-4-8 that was supposivley put in there as well. Wonder if its really what they installed when i bought the notebook over a year ago. If its not would that cause a problem with the second stick of OCZ 4-4-4-8 was put into the slot on the bottom??

 

Does the system run hot? When was the last time you cleaned out the heatsink?

 

system runs normal i think when gaming about 70 on the CPU and 80 on the video card actually cleaned out the heatsink earlier today. Why do you ask these questions?

 

It's not very common for two sticks of RAM to fail at the same time.

The computer will run at whatever timing it thinks is best, which isn't always the fastest timing the memory can handle. Few notebooks let you adjust timing, mostly big DTRs. No the timing shouldn't be causing a problem all of a sudden. If anything relaxed timings should help stability.

You will need to test each stick individually. How hard is it to get the stick under the keyboard out so you can test the OCZ by itself?

 

im not sure was hopeing someone could point me in the right direction on how to get the keyboard off and get to the ram i know there was a guide with pictures floating around somewhere but dunno where

 

Ok well that confirms it. Took the keyboard out and took out the initial ram and stuck the suspected faulty ram in. Booted it up and i got the DOS screen with the corupt system 32 message. Took that ram out put back in the old ram and windows booted up normally. So it must be the ram. Im glad OCZ has a lifetime warranty, ill be setting up an RMA tommorow. THanks for the help Loopty and if anyone else has any info for me lemme know.

 

You don't happen to have another laptop near by that you can test these RAM sticks on do you?

 

no i dont have another laptop around to test them on. Dont see how it could be anything other then that stick of ram though seeing as one will work and the other wont. With just having a single stick in in the main ram slot. Logically i cant see it being anything else.

 

I'm just a little worried since both sticks reported errors. A good stick shouldn't turn up any error s at all.

 

yeh it came up with 2 errors both showed as 1mb and had different code strings. The thing is this one that showed up with the 2 errors works flawlessly. When the other one was put soley in the primary slot it wouldnt even work at all. Im guessing that the 2 erros that showed up are minor and prob not problamatic. Maybe once this stick gets back from OCZ ill send the one with the 2 erros in as well.

 

Any memory error is problematic. You never know what's sitting in that memory position. It could corrupt any program or data.