Yes, it's official some virus (don't ask which) destroyed my internal memory of my desktop pc... way to go. Luckily I had two memory blocks, which leaves me one 512mb...
darn that asshole who wrote that code
rest in peace memory
Memories
Like the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time rewritten every line
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me - would we? could we?
Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it is the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
So it is the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
while it is possible for a virus to damage a computer's hardware, it is extremely rare. Are you sure that the RAM is destroyed? Did you try it in a different computer?
Well, i'm pretty sure that it was a virus, but i can't "prove" it of course... it was pretty new memory (2 years old), and it worked fine some days ago, and now it showed me about 600 errors with MemTest86+ (http://www.memtest.org/)
I didn't tried it on another pc, but since the 2nd block was giving me any errors I can assume that the test can be trusted
All errors dissappeared after removing the memory btw. I'm now running linux, waiting for more memory to install Vista
I find the chances of it being expectable, though usually less severe, deterioration of hardware more likely (knowing that it too is pretty rare in hardware of that age, depending on what brand etc) than a virus causing this.
kv, try swapping the two sticks and the slots they are in. If t he same _stick_ throws the errors, then yes the stick is dead (and I'm a monkey's uncle of a virus killed it). If the same _bank_ throws errors, the slot is dead, and just use a different slot for the "bad" stick of RAM>
Yeah, I don't think it is possible to kill memory with software. You can kill hard-drives with rapid overuse because that eventually makes the read/write heads colide with the disk. Memory is a set of circuits with no moving parts, so unless it found a way to short your memory out by giving it a huge burst of power (probably not possible to do with software), I doubt the virus killed your memory.
L4E_WakaMol-King wrote:Yeah, I don't think it is possible to kill memory with software. You can kill hard-drives with rapid overuse because that eventually makes the read/write heads colide with the disk. Memory is a set of circuits with no moving parts, so unless it found a way to short your memory out by giving it a huge burst of power (probably not possible to do with software), I doubt the virus killed your memory.
True, but it could have screwed with the OS so it didn't recognize the RAM. That could be fairly simple, especially considering any user on a windows compy can edit system files that have negative effects on the whole computer. It could simply edit out some lines of code where the os does RAM management, making it seem like the RAM was borked.
I don't know much about hardware or low-level operating system stuff, but that's my best guess.
Except 1) that would not affect the stick, it would affect the memory range, 2) that would not affect the BIOS, and 3) that's pretty hard to do as kernel memory is protected...
