OS or RAM issue?

Hi there, I've just bought a refubished laptop however I'm having issues with it already, first off the specs:
i5 480m processor
4gb RAM
460gtx Nvidia
640gb 5400rpm hdd

when I first got the laptop I went straight onto IE and almost immediately started getting issues, it took up a lot of memory (around 1gb) and jumped the cpu up to about 30% as well I closed it tried again and still the same, I then tried firefox which was fine for a while but then started crashing about once very half hour, I tried other programs but they crashed as well and windows was very buggy, I couldn't do a search on windows start for example.

I then tried the windows memory diagnostic tool which came up with no problems on normal, I then tried again on extended and it found no problems but crashed about 10% of the way through. I then reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled windows and seems to be alot better, windows doesn't seem to be buggy firefox seemed better, however after around 3 hours of use firefox crashed again and shortly after one of my other programs crashed, however I've been using it for about 2 hours since and it hasn't crashed. Thanks for any advice in advance

 

What version of Windows are you using and did you update to the latest service pack? And what version of FF are you using? That just sounds like a bad ram but you have to use like memtest program to be sure if it is bad ram? Does any other program crash like the O/S or another program besides those? You sure it isn't overheating as well?

 

I'm on Windows 7 service pack 1, firefox is on version 12, laptop isn't overheating, like I said windows was buggy and would often crash but seems better now after I reinstalled it, I take it memtest is like windows memory diagnosis, is it likely to find something that wmd didn't?

 

Are the symptoms still present after the reformat? If not, then it's probably just a quirky OS issue that was present with the factory install.

 

Yes my programs still crash but no where near as often as before the reinstall, I guess the fact that there's still an issue after I reformatted the hard drive points to it being a hardware issue, although it definately has made a difference which is confusing, I've noticed programs running slightly faster as well after the reinstall

 

This is what I use when I suspect bad ram.

You can download an iso, burn a CD, boot from the CD and let it run.

If you do get an error, remove one of the dimms (if you have more than one) and run it again, testing one dimm at a time.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

 

I had similar symptoms occur when I first built my desktop.. I ran a Memory test and errors were popping up left right and center! Replaced the RAM and all was fine.

I definently second running Memtest86+ to just see if it is the RAM.

 

Just testing the memory to eliminate any unknown factors your ram may have nothing wrong with them but testing is a way to narrow down problem but as another poster said could be a bad windows install as well.

 

Ok guys took the memory test and suprisingly enough no errors were found, I did notice something interesting though, under memory information it was saying I have two 2gb sticks, one samsung and the other Nanya technology, is it possible the two different makes of ram are causing conflicts?

 

Some say they should be the same brand, and on PCs with four slots, they should be the same in paired slots. They should be the same type and speed, but even if they are not, you should just get slower memory performance, not crashing. I have to keep a lot of aging PCs patched together, and have mixed brands many times without problems.


Have you checked the system and application logs for errors at the times your programs are crashing?

 

I've had random crashes with 2 different brands of memory on my PC before. I would just test with 1 brand of memory and see if you still get the crashes. It doesn't hurt to try this for a few hours. Some computers are very picky on memory.

 

None of my laptops are running the same brand RAM in their slot pairs, so that's not an issue. If you boot into Safe Mode, do the same symptoms occur?

 

Sorted it, the two brands of RAM (which were different speeds) were messing things up