8GB of ram, 4GB gets used and pc dies, HELP!

[chaos1986]

I've never encountered this one before, but earlier today my pc started saying i was low on memory with nothing open, task manager wouldn't fire up and firefox along with everything else just crashed and i had to reboot, same thing happened nearly right after it booted into windows so on the next reboot i got task manager open and watched my ram getting eaten, so i go to close the process but there is nothing using up the ram, it seems to get to about 4.5GB then the Pc folds.

I've done a virus scan and it hasn't picked anything up and no spywere, this is a clean install with a few programs installed.

After getting really wound up and having no obvious solutions hitting my computer with a flip-flop seemed to fix the issue... for now. What was it, is it a virus or is there any way to make sure this problem doesn't arise again, if it does will my flip-flop fix it again?

 

[sminlal]

Click the "Processes" tab in Task Manager and then click on the "Memory" column heading to sort the processes by memory usage. That should make it pretty clear which process is consuming all the memory.

 

[daship]

Are you running 64bit?

 

[chaos1986]

yeh im running 64bit, and i did check the processes, theres nothing using up all that ram

 

[Ijack]

If hitting it with a flip-flop solves the problem then it seems clear there is a poor contact somewhere. If I were you I would take the memory DIMMS out, clean the contacts with a pencil eraser and make sure that it is properly seated when you put it back in.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

plus one for ijack!

 

[Dockland]

I had exacly the same issue. I had to replace all 8 GB of RAM (the store switched for free) and the problem disapeared. Good Luck.

 

[Ijack]

Bad RAM is a distinct possibility, but it's worth trying cleaning/reseating first (especially if the PC is no longer under warranty).

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

May want to run Memtest on it for a while and see if you get errors.

 

[proxicide]

please make sure you take the time to read up about ESD (Electric Static Discharge) before you open up your pc-case because you could possibly destroy it with out knowing it

also check your bios to see if you have the correct timings specified for your memory modules and also check your motherboard manual to see if the memory you have is compatible

if seated correctly i would just follow through what ohiou_grad_06 suggested run Memtest at least 3hrs (go play Xbox, watch movie, etc to pass the time away)