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Before I head to the computer shop... (Memory slot problem)

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Armando:
once i had to "reseat" a memory stick like 8 times before it started working
-mouser (September 14, 2007, 02:06 PM)
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Why do these things happen. I don't know if some will remember my BSOD episode -- was driving me nuts -- but this is how it finally ended.
One week, after a couple weeks of complete calmness (I thought that a solved bug in farr also solved my BSOD problem -- naive I was), I got 4 crashes in a row. Once a day.
Out of despair, I pulled out my RAM sticks (not the first time I did that with that laptop, but...), put them back in, pulled them out again, and... put them back in.
Guess what? All is fine now. I can,t imagine that it was just that!!! How can that be????  :tellme:

Lashiec:
Well, the RAM slots do have lots of contacts, and if one fails, everything goes nuts. So that's why you have to ensure they're properly connected, even if you have to use a hammer to do that. My old computer sometimes beep on startup complaining about no present RAM sticks. A reset usually solves the problem.

Just for you to laugh a bit, one teacher told us he had a AMD Athlon CPU in one computer which rebooted itself when he launched Photoshop. One day he was disassembling this computer, and found that the CPU was having these problems because of one the pins was bent, so it seems Photoshop somehow used a certain functionality only accessible via that pin. Who knows? Computers are so unpredictable...

EDIT: The word was bent, not torn :)

Armando:
the CPU was having these problems because of one the pins was torn, so it seems Photoshop somehow used a certain functionality only accessible via that pin. -Lashiec (September 15, 2007, 09:32 AM)
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 ;D Wow. Thanks Lashiec.

mwb1100:
Out of despair, I pulled out my RAM sticks (not the first time I did that with that laptop, but...), put them back in, pulled them out again, and... put them back in.
Guess what? All is fine now. I can,t imagine that it was just that!!! How can that be????  :tellme:
-Armando (September 14, 2007, 10:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

Way back in the days when Byte magazine was published on paper, columnist Jerry Pournelle used to rave about something called Stabilant-22 'contact enhancer' that was supposed to forever fix and prevent these types of problems. 

The stuff costs a fortune (like $50 for 5ml) and I've never used it (seems like snake-oil to me), but Pournelle swore by it. 

Has anyone here used it?

Armando:
NEver heard of it, never used it...
50$? Well, if it could have solved one year worth of reboots and BSODs, why not... :) A bit much though...

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