CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [100]
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NOTE A general protection fault (GPF) is an error that can cause an application to crash. Often they’re caused by programs stepping on each other’s toes. Chapter 17, “Maintaining and Troubleshooting Windows,” goes into more detail on GPFs and other Windows errors.
Testing RAM
Once you discover that you may have a RAM problem, you have a couple of options. First, several companies manufacture hardware RAM-testing devices, but unless you have a lot of disposable income, they’re probably priced way too high for the average tech ($1,500 and higher). Second, you can use the method I use—replace and pray. Open the system case and replace each stick, one at a time, with a known-good replacement stick. (You have one of those lying around, don’t you?) This method, although potentially time-consuming, certainly works. With PC prices as low as they are now, you could simply replace the whole system for less than the price of a dedicated RAM tester.
Third, you could run a software-based tester on the RAM. Because you have to load a software tester into the memory it’s about to scan, there’s always a small chance that simply starting the software RAM tester might cause an error. Still, you can find some pretty good free ones out there. My favorite is the venerable Memtest86 written by Mr. Chris Brady (www.memtest86.com). Memtest86 exhaustively checks your RAM and reports bad RAM when it finds it (Figure 6-36).
Figure 6-36 Memtest86 in action
Chapter Review
Questions
1. Steve adds a second 1-GB 240-pin DIMM to his PC, which should bring the total RAM in the system up to 2 GB. The PC has an Intel Core 2 Duo 3-GHz processor and three 240-pin DIMM slots on the motherboard. When he turns on the PC, however, only 1 GB of RAM shows up during the RAM count. Which of the following is most likely to be the problem?
A. Steve failed to seat the RAM properly.
B. Steve put DDR SDRAM in DDR 2 slot.
C. The CPU cannot handle 2 GB of RAM.
D. The motherboard can use only one RAM slot at a time.
2. Scott wants to add 512 MB of PC100 SDRAM to an aging but still useful desktop system. The system has a 100-MHz motherboard and currently has 256 MB of non-ECC SDRAM in the system. What else does he need to know before installing?
A. What speed of RAM does he need?
B. What type of RAM does he need?
C. How many pins does the RAM have?
D. Can the system handle that much RAM?
3. What is the primary reason that DDR2 RAM is faster than DDR RAM?
A. The core speed of the RAM chips is faster.
B. The input/output speed of the RAM is faster.
C. DDR RAM is single-channel and DDR2 RAM is dual-channel.
D. DDR RAM uses 184-pin DIMMs and DDR2 uses 240-pin DIMMs.
4. What is the term for the delay in the RAM’s response to a request from the MCC?
A. Variance
B. MCC gap
C. Latency
D. Fetch interval
5. Rico has a motherboard with four RAM slots that doesn’t seem to work. He has two RDRAM RIMMs installed, for a total of 1 GB of memory, but the system won’t boot. What is likely to be the problem?
A. The motherboard requires SDRAM, not RDRAM.
B. The motherboard requires DDR SDRAM, not RDRAM.
C. The motherboard requires all four slots filled with RDRAM.
D. The motherboard requires the two empty slots to be filled with CRIMMs for termination.
6. Silas has an AMD-based motherboard with two sticks of DDR2 RAM installed in two of the three RAM slots, for a total of 2 GB of system memory. When he runs CPU-Z to test the system, he notices that the software claims he’s running single-channel memory. What could be the problem? (Select the best answer.)
A. His motherboard only supports single-channel memory.
B. His motherboard only supports dual-channel