Failed advanced memory pattern test

[Soleus7]

Hello,

I'm having an issue with a PC that I recently had built for me. On both Win 7 and 10 I was having issues with application crashing (games), sluggish/irregular boot times with occasional slight hang on boot, windows closing with partial fragment of the window remaining on screen, and app tiles just simply disappearing. Also, sfc /scannow showed corrupt files that it couldn't repair.

When applications would crash, I would get an Access_Violation error stating that memory couldn't be read. I ran diagnostic tests on all my hardware, which came out fine, so I decided to download PC Doctor to see what it would show. I ran the full system diagnostic test and everything passed except for the advanced memory pattern test. I had previously read that bad memory could lead to corruption issues. So, at this point I concluded that I must have bad RAM.

I took my machine to the PC store that assembled it and told them I thought my memory was bad (16GB Corsair Vengeance). They ran Memtest86+ on my machine all weekend, did 30+ total passes, with zero errors. So, at this point I'm pretty confused as to what is going on here.

The PC store is going to replace the memory anyway, run their own full diagnostic test on all the hardware, and do a fresh OS install. For what it's worth, this system is less than a month old, and they ran burn-in tests/ memtest before I walked out the door with it.

Any idea what could be going on here? The PC shop guys said that it's probably not the memory controller because memtest would have picked up on that by this point (there would have been some sort of error). I'm hoping that new RAM plus a fresh Windows installation will fix the issues, but in the event that it doesn't, where should I go from here?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[PCD_Sam]

Hello Soleus7,

I am sorry to hear you are having issues with your gaming rig. Memory issues are some of the most annoying to diagnose as there are many different reasons you could see a corruption error. Other hardware such as PCI/e cards, other audio/video chips might be causing issues with your memory. Heat is also another culprit of causing heat to misbehave.

When you ran PC-Doctor on your machine was there any other processes running? Does it seem to happen on the same games? Have you overclocked your memory?

If you can identify any trends it might become easier to diagnose what the cause may be. But to give you a better idea of what the Advanced memory test does

Advanced Pattern Test
This test checks for memory cell corruption from read/write activity on adjacent cells (cells are individual bits). It is run from memory address 0 through each memory cell sequentially to the top of extended memory, then from the top down to memory address 0.

I hope that it was indeed bad memory and your new sticks work without any hassle but please let us know if you are still having issues.

Thanks!

-Sam

[Soleus7]

Hey thanks for the response.

I don't believe that I had any other programs running when I ran the PC Doctor tests.
I've run a few stress/burn-in tests on my CPU and my GPUs; they seem to be functioning normally.

As far as heat is concerned, that could be the culprit. I live in the southern U.S., it's summer, and my home office is upstairs. I blast the AC when I'm gaming, and I try to keep my rig near the AC vent. I've got an SLI set-up with two powerful cards and it can get a bit toasty at times. Even with 5 fans I've seen my cards get up to around 80c during a stress test. I will talk to the guys at the shop about other cooling options and see what they say.

Thanks again.

[PCD_Sam]

Let us know how it works out!