How to Tell If RAM Is Bad? 8 Bad RAM Symptoms for You!

RAM, short for random-access memory, is one of the most important components of your computer. RAM is aimed at providing fast read and write access to storage devices. Usually, it is more durable than all other components on a computer since it uses very little power and doesn’t have moving parts.

Though rate, sometimes RAM can go bad. Due to its significance, any issues can manifest themselves in strange and confusing ways at once. Most PCs have multiple RAM chips and not all of them will fail immediately, so it is hard for you to diagnose a problem as an RAM issue.

What are the symptoms of bad RAM? How to tell if RAM is bad? You can get a lot of information from the following paragraphs.

8 Common Bad RAM Symptoms

What happens when RAM goes bad? This is the first thing you should know. Now, let’s see these signs of bad RAM below.

1. Infamous Blue Screen of Death

If a blue screen pops up and white text flashes directly after, it is likely that your bad RAM causes this issue. This is a pretty annoying warning sign since the text flashes so fast so that you don’t have a chance to read the error message. It is hard to determine any possible error code from that.

2. Sporadic PC Freeze

Your keyboard and mouse may become unresponsive abruptly. The PC also freezes without any warning, and sometimes Windows freezes for minutes no matter what app you are using. Even it takes 2 minutes to open Word, or 3-4 minutes to open Internet Explorer.

3. Declining PC Performance

When you first open your computer, you find it can run well. However, as the day progresses, you will find websites take much time to load and local apps run at a tortoise’s pace. The PC performance is degrading to an unusable crawl.

This phenomenon indicates your PC has a RAM problem.Tip: This post – Two Methods to Help You Test Computer Performance Windows 10/8/7 may be the one you are interested in.

4. Attempting to Install New Program Failed

When attempting to install a new program, the operation repeatedly fails. You may encounter these cases, for example, an error code without any obvious cause displays on the screen, a small program hangs on the loading stage for longer than normal, etc. If you reinstall the operating system, some odd error messages also appear.

These symptoms can be caused by many reasons, but the faulty RAM could be the underlying issue.

5. Random Reboot

Your PC keeps randomly restarting while you are performing a task. In addition, the computer just sometimes restarts. This symptom doesn’t always indicate a RAM problem. A hard drive problem can also cause a random reboot.

However, if your computer reboots almost immediately after the desktop initializes, this could be a bad RAM symptom.

6. Files Get Corrupted

You may notice that files, particularly the ones you frequently access and save appear to be corrupted inexplicably. Perhaps this is a sign of bad RAM. Even RAM issues could worsen over time. Eventually, the file structure of your hard drive will be compromised and your machine no longer boots up.

7. Missing RAM

Your Windows operating system may show you less RAM than you actually have installed on the motherboard. Usually, you go to Control Panel > System and Security > System to see the computer’s statistics, including RAM.

If you find the amount of RAM is not different, make sure your RAM chips are properly seated on the motherboard or you switch the slots that the RAM sticks sit in.

8. Computer Beep

When booting your computer, you may hear a beep, multiple beeps or a sequence of beeps. They indicate different issues, and RAM is included. Depending on different manufacturers, the beep codes are different.

According to users, it is almost a RAM problem when the Dell machines beep.Tip: Sometimes your hard drive also beeps. If you have this issue, refer to this article – [SOLVED] Seagate Hard Drive Beeping? Here Is What You Should Do to get solutions.

Other Bad RAM Symptoms

In addition to these symptoms of bad RAM, you can experience other signs of faulty RAM:

1. Video card fails to load
2. No sound
3. RAM isn’t recognized by your computer

(source: https://www.minitool.com/backup-tips/bad-ram-symptoms.html)