Is it bad to use my Macbook with bad RAM?

[WillMak]

My macbook has been shutting down randomly during the past week. I wasn't sure what it was, but searched on macrumours which seemed to imply that it was probably a bad case of RAM. So I decide to run memtest, and sure enough, my notebook has been shutting down whenever I try to run it (I take it this is a sign of bad ram?) I bought this RAM 6 months ago and it has a "lifetime warranty," from G.Skill. Has anyone ever dealt G.Skill ram going bad?

More importantly tho, is it bad to continue using bad ram on my Macbook? I need my computer for school the next two weeks for college, but my stock macram is back home.

 

[extraextra]

I probably wouldn't want to use bad RAM in my computer. I've heard that it can corrupt software, move files to wrong places, etc.

 

[squirrelonfire]

Return the ram to the manufacturers

I use 2gb of Super Talent RAM ( I know they're generic but reputable because I run a company and lot of my distributors deal business w/ them). Anyway, call up the manufacters and tell them to send you another piece of ram. According to what you said, yeah it's their fault.

 

[saga]

My macbook has been shutting down randomly during the past week. I wasn't sure what it was, but searched on macrumours which seemed to imply that it was probably a bad case of RAM. So I decide to run memtest, and sure enough, my notebook has been shutting down whenever I try to run it (I take it this is a sign of bad ram?) I bought this RAM 6 months ago and it has a "lifetime warranty," from G.Skill. Has anyone ever dealt G.Skill ram going bad?

More importantly tho, is it bad to continue using bad ram on my Macbook? I need my computer for school the next two weeks for college, but my stock macram is back home.

From several posts on this forum, I would tend to think that G. Skill is good RAM. I jusg bought 2x1gig of corsair ram, and also heard that this is good ram. That was my impression.

 

[evangelion-01]

It's either that or RSS, i beleave it's rss though, my macbook kept shutting down after about a min of use and the ram it's perfectly fine, got it "fixed(if you can call it fixing when they send it back to you all scratched)" and it doesnt shut down anymore.

 

[Sun Baked]

I probably wouldn't want to use bad RAM in my computer. I've heard that it can corrupt software, move files to wrong places, etc.

Corrupt the files, OS, and drive.

It will likely keep working through the Kernal Panics until one day there is a flashing ? mark -- which may mean a significant loss of data as the drive catalog suffers a meltdown.

 

[vv-tim]

Corrupt the files, OS, and drive.

It will likely keep working through the Kernal Panics until one day there is a flashing ? mark -- which may mean a significant loss of data as the drive catalog suffers a meltdown.

Where did you get this idea? Bad RAM isn't going to affect the hard drive in any way other than an occastional corrupted file that was being written to as the computer got a kernel panic.


Anyway, chances are good that if the computer is just powering off randomly, it's not the RAM. RAM usually will cause a visible kernel panic, a reboot, or a system hang.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Where did you get this idea? Bad RAM isn't going to affect the hard drive in any way other than an occastional corrupted file that was being written to as the computer got a kernel panic.

Hard drive directory damage is random, cumulative, and it doesn't heal itself. So it's entirely plausible that a series of kernel panics not followed by fsck sessions would eventually result in an unbootable Mac.