memory faulty? why some programs work on one comp. but not another

[urlwolf]

Hi,

I'm stumped. I have 3 laptops. I just installed macromedia flash 8 pro on them and in my main one (dell 600m), it simply crashes when I try to open the 'actions' window. The error message is useless. The other 2 laptops work just fine.

That same dell had problems installing different programs. E.g., backup4All showed a memory leak and eneded at >400mb after a few seconds.

I wonder what could be wrong. Could the memory on my dell be faulty? Would it be worth it to test for it? A clean win reinstall is out of question as it'd take forever for me to get everything back to how it is now. A 'repair' install, I'd consider, but I did one less than 1 month ago...

Maybe there is something wrong with the fonts, the registry, or any other OS-wide thing that affects flash?

thanks

[Carol Haynes]

Can't hurt to run a memory check program ... just let it soak test over night.

Make sure you use one that runs outside Windows so that it can check all the memory.

I have used http://www.memtest86.com/ with some success in the past (if you view detecting faulty RAM a success!).

If you want a bootable CDROM version download http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.2.iso.zip unpack and burn to CD the reboot from the CD - it all runs pretty automatically.

[JavaJones]

Memtest86+ is more currently updated: http://www.memtest.org/ A memory test is definitely recommended.

- Oshyan

[db90h]

There are numerous possible reasons why an application will run fine on one computer and not on another. These include the influences from other software that is running, different shared code versions (i.e. system and runtime DLLs and device drivers), and differences in the hardware itself. Let's assume none of these very likely reasons is the cause behind your problem..

As far as hardware instability goes, this is actually more of a concern than many people realize. I learned this when I did extensive testing with Prime95 to determine if my system was stable at a given clock speed. Prime95 showed me that even the system boots fine and seems to run quite ok, small memory (or other) errors can creep in and have unpredictable results. Power fluctuations and interference are also a common causes of similar problems.

Therefore, I suggest using Prime95 in it's "Test" (or is it "Benchmark"..) mode to determine if your system is stable. Leave it running over-night. If Prime95 completes ok for about 12 hours, then I'd say that your system hardware is as reasonably stable and the cause is more likely one that I listed, or implied, in paragraph 1.