corsair-logo A few weeks ago my main Windows Vista box started to act up.  I would get frequent blue screens and had to reboot way too often.  So the lovely job of troubleshooting the problem began.  I researched it a bit, and what I read plus some previous knowledge having to do with such matters led me to believe that it was probably a memory issue.  I use Corsair ram and they usually make pretty high-quality stuff, but I ran MemTest86 and one of my sticks of ram showed up with around 100,000 errors after one pass.

If you don't know what Memtest86 is (shame on you! =P) it's a program which runs on boot that scans your ram one module at a time.  Basically it writes to the ram, then checks the ram for what it wrote, and if what was written to the ram isn't the same as what Memtest wrote then it knows there's an error.  It does this over and over with various different tests and one entire battery of tests is known as a "pass."  You can do tons and tons of passes if you want and, if you let it, Memtest can run for 24 hours without fully completing the scan.  Usually though, if there's something really wrong with a stick of ram it'll only take 1 or 2 passes for it to find errors, if that.

Anyways, I ran Memtest, saw the errors, and knew that I had to replace one of my sticks of ram.  My first impulse was to go to Newegg and buy a replacement, but then I remembered that Corsair provides a lifetime warranty on its memory.  I went ahead and submitted a case to them and they issued a return to me.  All I had to do was ship it in to them (which took only a few days - I sent it in on September 28th and they had it by October 1st) and then wait for them to send me my replacement.  That's where things got a little...slow.  Without turning this into a gaming post, a game I've been anticipating greatly - Valve's Orange Box - just came out on October 10th.  Without that stick of ram though I was pretty sure my machine wouldn't be able to run it, so by the 5th when I hadn't heard back from Corsair with an update about the return I started to get nervous.

I went ahead and shot them an email just asking for a status update and to see if anything was wrong.  A couple days later I heard back and was assured that they had packed my return up and were getting ready to ship it.  That night I received the shipping confirmation, and 3 days later (on the 12th) I received my ram replacement.  Overall I'm pretty happy with my experience and if nothing else it saved me a hundred bucks so I really can't complain.  So to anyone out there with hardware troubles this is just a suggestion - check with the manufacturer to see if they offer warranties before you buy a replacement!  It seems like a simple enough thing but it totally slipped my mind at the time.  The Orange Box is great by the way.

Currently Listening To:  Dropkick Murphys - State of Massachusetts
Currently Playing: Project Gotham Racing 4, Orange Box, Puzzle Quest