Your PC contains two forms of memory. Firstly there is the hard drive, this can be thought of as the long term memory and will retain its content even when your PC is switched off. The second kind of memory is RAM (Random Access Memory), and this can be thought of as the short term memory, and will not retain its contents when your PC is switched off. Occasionally a RAM module will become faulty, and this will usually result in your PC crashing or some other form of strange error such as a corrupted display occurring. In this situation it is useful to be able to test your own RAM modules before you decide if they need to be replaced or not.
Fortunately there is an excellent free utility which can be used to test RAM. This utility is named memtest 86+ and is available directly for download from Microsoft. When you first run memtest 86+ it will perform a very quick test of your RAM, although this is not a deep enough test to decide if your RAM modules are faulty or not. In very few cases this short test will identify a problem, especially with more seriously damaged RAM modules, although usually you will need to perform the secondary and more exhaustive tests.
memtest 86+ will create a boot floppy or CD which can be used to test your RAM modules more exhaustively. When prompted, reboot your PC allowing it to boot from the floppy disc or the CD that memtest 86+ created. Please note, you may need to change the boot order of devices in your BIOS before your PC will boot from this media. memtest 86+ will now perform two additional tests, the first test of RAM is a slightly more in-depth test the original, and will complete fairly quickly. After this an exhaustive test will run, which will test your RAM modules repeatedly until you quit the application. It is advised that you run this test for several hours, or overnight if possible, allowing memtest 86+ to highlight any potential errors which may be intermittent.
If after several hours memtest 86+ has not found any problems with your RAM modules it is highly unlikely that is your RAM causing a problem and you should look further afield for the cause of your error. If memtest 86+ finds problems with your RAM modules you should consider replacing them immediately.
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