Oh, the woes...

You know, most PC issues fall nicely into one of two groups: software and hardware. The software issues can be more complicated, but are generally always fixable. The hardware issues, however, are the real #%*&@.

I think that Kou can relate with me when I say that RAM is perhaps the most troublesome of the hardware problems. I seem to recall him browsing many a late-night forum in search of that distant solution.

Let me tell you a little story of my old PC. First of all, it is dated now so not only is its speed sub-par comparatively but its RAM style has gone the way of the dinosaur in relation to mainstream desktop hardware. In other words it has RAMBUS whereas more modern PC's use some form of DDR. This not only makes RAM problems harder to diagnose since it is less common, but it also makes it harder to replace since the hardware is in shorter supply and thus more expensive.

My old PC, a sturdy and faithful machine, had 1 GB of PC800 RAMBUS dwelling inside it. Half of that is fine, the other half is not. I was greeted by many a Blue Screen of Death before I finally tried ripping out half of my RAM and replacing it with the "Dummy RIMMs" necessary to keep the motherboard happy. (Which also involved at least two trips to my mom's house to pick up my old hardware).

At this point I remembered that this RAM, Corsair brand, is under a lifetime warranty! So I look up Corsair's policy on forums (of course, right Kou?) and post (on another forum) my problem to get help. I then have to run this special app called Memtest86 to find the issue. I have tested my good RAM, I will test my "bad" RAM later to find out if it really is bad RAM.

If the RAM is bad, I'll get free replacements (or RMA as they say). I'm keeping my fingers crossed because I need that last 512 to play Villains with even a decent performance rating!