Good way to test new RAM?

[History Fan]

I have a six month old desktop PC running Windows XP Home SP2. It came
preinstalled with a Intel Pentium D 3.0Ghz processor, with 1GB of RAM.
Today, I doubled the RAM to 2GB. There seems to be a slight speed increase
when opening some programs, such as MS Word, and viewing pictures My
Documents. While other programs like System Information and XP's Help and
Support are as slow as ever to load. Is there a good way to test if the new
RAM is working? For the record, Windows correctly identifies the new RAM
total.

When a program is slow to load, I don't know whether to blame the
program itself, the processor, or the RAM.

 

[Bob I]

In a nutshell, RAM only speeds things up if you were hitting the
pagefile. If you are experiencing general system slugishness, you may
want to evaluate what's using the CPU and correct it.

 

[Matt]

If your RAM is failing, generally your computer will crash, not slow
down. However, you can test your RAM with this:

http://www.memtest86.com/

Download the ISO image, burn it to a CDR, boot from that CDR and leave
it for at least two passes. If it detects no errors, your RAM is working
just fine.

 

[mareta]

I have a six month old desktop PC running Windows XP Home SP2. It came
preinstalled with a Intel Pentium D 3.0Ghz processor, with 1GB of RAM.
Today, I doubled the RAM to 2GB. There seems to be a slight speed
increase when opening some programs, such as MS Word, and viewing pictures
My Documents. While other programs like System Information and XP's Help
and Support are as slow as ever to load. Is there a good way to test if
the new RAM is working? For the record, Windows correctly identifies the
new RAM total.

When a program is slow to load, I don't know whether to blame the
program itself, the processor, or the RAM.

How much RAM were you typically using under 1GB?

Do you have a lot of services running?

Simple tasks like word processing, viewing pictures, web, email, etc weren't
even coming close to using 1GB of RAM. If thats all you were doing, you
weren't even using 512MB of RAM.

You aren't going to see a speed increase with 2GB of RAM with just these
types of trivial tasks.

....but, if you use big programs like Adobe Photoshop and keep lots of other
programs running simultaneously -- everything will be more responsive since
they won't have to page off the HDD.

 

[ANONYMOUS]

You could also try this link:

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

hth

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have a six month old desktop PC running Windows XP Home SP2. It
came preinstalled with a Intel Pentium D 3.0Ghz processor, with 1GB
of RAM. Today, I doubled the RAM to 2GB. There seems to be a slight
speed increase when opening some programs, such as MS Word, and
viewing pictures My Documents. While other programs like System
Information and XP's Help and Support are as slow as ever to load.

That's not at all surprising. Unfortunately, there's a lot of bad advice
floating around and among that bad advice is that the more RAM you have the
better.

That's true only up to a point. How much RAM you need for good performance
is *not* a one-size-fits-all situation. You get good performance if the
amount of RAM you have keeps you from using the page file, and that depends
on what apps you run. Most people running a typical range of business
applications find that somewhere around 256-384MB works well, others need
512MB. Almost anyone will see poor performance with less than 256MB. Some
people, particularly those doing things like editing large photographic
images, can see a performance boost by adding even more than
512MB--sometimes much more.

If you are currently using the page file significantly, more memory will
decrease or eliminate that usage, and improve your performance. If you are
not using the page file significantly, more memory will do nothing for you.
Only few people can make effective use of more than 1GB. In fact, the 1GB
you started with may have been more than you could effectively use.

 

[Rock]

I have a six month old desktop PC running Windows XP Home SP2. It came
preinstalled with a Intel Pentium D 3.0Ghz processor, with 1GB of RAM.
Today, I doubled the RAM to 2GB. There seems to be a slight speed
increase when opening some programs, such as MS Word, and viewing pictures
My Documents. While other programs like System Information and XP's Help
and Support are as slow as ever to load. Is there a good way to test if
the new RAM is working? For the record, Windows correctly identifies the
new RAM total.

When a program is slow to load, I don't know whether to blame the
program itself, the processor, or the RAM.

In addition to the other good posts, here is a link to a site with tips for
checking out a slow computer.
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

Here is a link to an excellent article on Virtual Memory in XP by the late
Alex Nichol, MVP.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

In the section titled "How big should the page file be?" Are links to a
small utility by MVP Bill James for monitoring the actual usage of the page
file. You might want to read the article and download this utility. See
how much the page file is used. Then to test, remove 1GB of memory and
check again to see what difference the extra 1GB was making.
Make sure to use appropriate anti-static precautions when inside the
computer.