System damage due to "bad" RAM

[philo]

I am trying to help a friend of mine who is using the Win7 64bit.

His machine would continually reboot every time he'd try to start it.
As it turned out, the problem was simply a matter of re-seating the RAM.

I did not check the machine thoroughly, I just stayed long enough to
confirm that his system was stable and a few of him main applications
were working.

I checked back with him a few days later and he told me his printer is
no longer working (and a reinstall did not help) ...plus many (or all?)
of his 32bit applications no longer function.

It seems like the multiple tries to boot the machine with mis-seated RAM
must have damaged something, but I am trying to figure out a logical way
to proceed.

 

[Wolf K]

I am trying to help a friend of mine who is using the Win7 64bit.

His machine would continually reboot every time he'd try to start it.
As it turned out, the problem was simply a matter of re-seating the RAM.

I did not check the machine thoroughly, I just stayed long enough to
confirm that his system was stable and a few of him main applications
were working.

I checked back with him a few days later and he told me his printer is
no longer working (and a reinstall did not help) ...plus many (or all?)
of his 32bit applications no longer function.

It seems like the multiple tries to boot the machine with mis-seated RAM
must have damaged something, but I am trying to figure out a logical way
to proceed.

A simple reinstall is not enough. Uninstall first, but use a 3rd party
uninstaller. Then reinstall. For payware, it's essential that you hav
registration or unlocking keys available.

Good luck.

 

[Paul]

I am trying to help a friend of mine who is using the Win7 64bit.

His machine would continually reboot every time he'd try to start it.
As it turned out, the problem was simply a matter of re-seating the RAM.

I did not check the machine thoroughly, I just stayed long enough to
confirm that his system was stable and a few of him main applications
were working.

I checked back with him a few days later and he told me his printer is
no longer working (and a reinstall did not help) ...plus many (or all?)
of his 32bit applications no longer function.

It seems like the multiple tries to boot the machine with mis-seated RAM
must have damaged something, but I am trying to figure out a logical way
to proceed.

Using System Restore, try rolling back the system to a point in
time before the troubles. The purpose of doing this, is to get
a relatively undamaged Registry. Apparently, parts of the registry
are held in RAM, and written out at the end of a session. And perhaps
that's how the registry accumulated a few problems. The registry
has some forms of protection, but I don't think they're intended
to fix or detect RAM based problems.

If that didn't work, and you roll forward to the current
date again, you could try "sfc /scannow" for fun. It probably
won't fix anything, but just in case some portion of the
system got damaged, perhaps that will fix it. (That's a long shot.)

I wouldn't expect the 32 bit applications to be damaged, because
they should have been written during their installation, and there
is practically no reason to move them. (Defragmentation might move them,
but on their own, they probably stay put and are read-only.)

Paul

 

[Wolf K]

I am trying to help a friend of mine who is using the Win7 64bit.

His machine would continually reboot every time he'd try to start it.
As it turned out, the problem was simply a matter of re-seating the RAM.

I did not check the machine thoroughly, I just stayed long enough to
confirm that his system was stable and a few of him main applications
were working.

I checked back with him a few days later and he told me his printer is
no longer working (and a reinstall did not help) ...plus many (or
all?) of his 32bit applications no longer function.

It seems like the multiple tries to boot the machine with mis-seated
RAM must have damaged something, but I am trying to figure out a
logical way to proceed.

Using System Restore, try rolling back the system to a point in
time before the troubles. The purpose of doing this, is to get
a relatively undamaged Registry. Apparently, parts of the registry
are held in RAM, and written out at the end of a session. And perhaps
that's how the registry accumulated a few problems. The registry
has some forms of protection, but I don't think they're intended
to fix or detect RAM based problems.
[...]
Paul

If that doesn't work, then complete uninstall --> reinstall will fix the
registry errors. Revo and Your Uninstaller have free versions which do a
a good job of cleaning the registry after uninstalling.

HTH

 

[philoÂ]

On 07/15/2013 04:53 PM, Wolf K wrote:
e troubles. The purpose of doing this, is to get

a relatively undamaged Registry. Apparently, parts of the registry
are held in RAM, and written out at the end of a session. And perhaps
that's how the registry accumulated a few problems. The registry
has some forms of protection, but I don't think they're intended
to fix or detect RAM based problems.
[...]
Paul

If that doesn't work, then complete uninstall --> reinstall will fix the
registry errors. Revo and Your Uninstaller have free versions which do a
a good job of cleaning the registry after uninstalling.

HTH

Thanks folks. I will tell him to try a system restore.

If that does not do the trick I may just tell him to totally reinstall
Win7. He has all his data backed up

 

[Philip Herlihy]

On 07/15/2013 04:53 PM, Wolf K wrote:
e troubles. The purpose of doing this, is to get

a relatively undamaged Registry. Apparently, parts of the registry
are held in RAM, and written out at the end of a session. And perhaps
that's how the registry accumulated a few problems. The registry
has some forms of protection, but I don't think they're intended
to fix or detect RAM based problems.
[...]
Paul

If that doesn't work, then complete uninstall --> reinstall will fix the
registry errors. Revo and Your Uninstaller have free versions which do a
a good job of cleaning the registry after uninstalling.

HTH

Thanks folks. I will tell him to try a system restore.

If that does not do the trick I may just tell him to totally reinstall
Win7. He has all his data backed up

Do a full disk check before doing any of the above.