Bad RAM

I guess there are many ways to drive a sysadmin crazy - I even experienced a few by now; But the most effective one of all seems to be bad memory. Let me tell you: Nowadays most systems that I get to look at are Windows boxes which are acting weird in a not really reproducible way.

So the problem now is, you cannot see the memory problem instantly as windows - due to the owners actions - doesn’t run as smooth as it could. So the first thing you’d do is reinstalling…

Now the clean install uses less memory than the old cluttered one, which could just lead to the bad memory block not being allocated and so we don’t see the problem for now, until more memory is used. The computer ends up on our desk again.

Usually that game continues until you boot Linux and wonder about a mysterious kernel panic. That’s where the serious search starts as we blame the hardware now…

Lesson learned: Hardware does not last forever!