With keen eyes glued on the monitor, you are typing an important mail, or handling serious office work. Suddenly, your screen turns blue. Your RAM just crashed and your unsaved works are gone. Has it ever happened to you? You are not alone. Memory problems can be quite annoying and it can be a side effect of old Windows or frequent use of corrupt files. Here the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool comes handy. It comes pre-installed with some versions of Windows and takes at best 5 minutes to run and find out the actual problem with your memory.
Table of Contents
Common RAM Problems
The computer memory that temporarily saves your data while you typing, browsing, or playing games is called RAM (random access memory). It is very important as it provides a memory space for your short time activity, multitasking, and switching between your tasks. With any problem with your RAM, you may face BSOD (blue screen of death), slower speed, freezing in switching between tasks, a random crash of memory, sudden reboot, repeated booting, graphics problem, screen blacking, etc.
All these are quite annoying as the user experiences frequent disrupt in working with the computer. How can you solve it? Well, before solving any problem, you have to find out exactly what is causing the problem? Once you find it, the solution becomes much easy.
What is the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool?
Every time you power on your computer, it performs pretty basic diagnostic tests to find any issues with hardware. But any problem causing by bad RAM requires elaborate testing. Windows Memory Diagnostic is an excellent tool for this purpose. It comes pre-installed and is supported for the older versions of Windows (Windows Vista, Windows 7) to the newest ones like Windows 10. It is free software and basically, anyone can run the test.
How to Use the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool
For Automatic Memory Diagnosis
- Save your works. As the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool scans the memory and requires rebooting your computer, any unsaved work will be lost. So, save your work in permanent memory before you run the test.
- If you get a notification that your memory might have some problem, click on the notification for setting up the time of the rebooting of your computer.
- After restarting, the diagnostic tool will test your memory automatically. This might take a couple of minutes. The issues will be pointed out at Event Viewer.
For Manual Memory Diagnosis
- Make sure to save your works.
- Go to search option of Windows and type and select ‘Windows Memory diagnostic’.
3. Choose ‘Restart now’ to restart your computer. After the first restart, the diagnostic tool diagnoses the memory. Wait patiently for a few minutes. After the second restart, you a good to use your computer.
Find Memory Diagnostic Result
- After the diagnosis, you can find the result either from clicking on the notification or from the Event Viewer.
- From the search bar type and select ‘Event Viewer’.
3. From there go to Windows logs > Systems.
3. From the right of the window select ‘find’.
4. A pop-up window will appear with a search box. Type ‘MemoryDiagnostic’ and click on ‘find next’.
5. The upper box will show the memory scan and the lower box show individual detail. You can also double-tap an item for details.
6. If you find any issue with the memory, check and remove all the RAM sticks, and perform the diagnosis with each stick. It is an easy way to find out a bad stick and replace it.
Advanced Options
With this option, you change the setting in the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool. Follow the process,
- Run the Windows diagnostic tools following the details stated above.
- After starting the process, press F1.
- You can change the settings to run a Basic, Standard, or Extended test. You can also select the number of times the test should perform as well as the cache setting.
- After setting according to your liking, press F10 to start the process of diagnosis.
Disable Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool
The common problem users face after running the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool is that it keeps running on the background every time they boot the PC. You can kill it from the task manager, but this method is not permanent. To fix the problem follow the steps,
- Go to Control Panel > Administrative tools > Task Scheduler > Windows Memory Diagnostic and kill the task.
- Delete any reference to the program.
- After rebooting the PC check the Task Manager. It should not run.
- Follow these steps every time you go through the memory diagnostic process.
Conclusion
The key to fix any problem is detecting the problem in the first place. If you are facing issues with the display and performance of your computer, there is a high chance it is due to bad RAM. Windows Memory Diagnostic tool comes in great use when it comes to pinpoint the exact problem. It is free and easy to use. In a couple of minutes, you get the result and its details. Now that you know the process, check your RAM status, and fix the issues using it.
