Standard DRAM Memory

[rgrenader]

System is Dell Optiplex 755, 2 ea 2 GB Crucial DIMM DDR2 PC2-5300.  In attempting to upgrade to Windows 7 over the weekend, there are several times when the install process has to perform a system reboot.  Each time, with either the Upgrade or New install proceedure, rebooting hangs with a Memory Parity Error BSOD. 

I started the Windows Memory Tester that came with the Win7, set it to run continuously, came back and found the system had rebooted.   Which I assumes means that some error upset the tester.

Is Windows 7 more demanding on RAM during the upgrade process than running Vista was?  This is the first time I have seen a parity error since the RAM was installed.

[Crucial_maulmod]

Hi rgrenader,

Were you having any stability issues before you tried to upgrade to Win7?

The first thing to do is test the memory.  To determine if the memory is faulty we recommend Memtest.

Memtest is a standalone memory testing program that can test your memory independently from the operating system to eliminate the possibility of drivers or other software causing the errors.

Memtest can be downloaded free from here .

If it returns errors we can get this replaced for you.  If there are no errors we can then look into it a bit further to determine what may be causing it. 

Please post back with your results.

[rgrenader]

I used the Microsoft Memory tester that is included in the Win7 disti DVD, which caused the PC to reboot after running for a few hours.  I contact Crucial, got an RMA for the RAM, reinstalled.  This time, I was 90% through the installation of Win7 when the parity error occured.

My thoughts are: 1) is video RAM errors included in the BSOD parity error?  2) perhaps there is an issue with the Win7 DVD which causes the error on install.

[Crucial_maulmod]

It is unlikely that another set of memory is faulty but to make sure there are no problems with the memory we would strongly recommend that you run memtest (http://www.memtest.org/). This is a far superior test to those included in operating systems. It should highlight if there are any problems reading/writing to the memory that may be causing the issues. This test will also show up any system instabilities.

Please also make sure that the latest BIOS is installed as some systems already have BIOS updates that have included fixes for running Windows 7.

If memtest checks out ok, then it rules out the memory as the problem and you should contact either the system manufacturer for further advice/BIOS updates or Microsoft.

Please let us know how you get on.