Memtest86+ failing address, what does this mean?

Question

My computer recently got a problem where whenever I turn on the computer I would see a blue screen telling me to remove disks or other medias. So I messed around and thought it was hopeless then I turned to the only solution I know of, to reinstall Windows. Now Windows doesn't even install or any Linux distro. I finally found memtest86+ and did it through a USB drive and Linux distro that included it. Can someone tell me what's wrong with my RAM?

Tst= 9 
pass= 1 
failing address= 000508708bc - 1288 . 0MB
Good= 62fb9344
Bad= 62fb934c
Err-Bits= 00000008
Count= 1
CPU= 0

Answer 1

Yes. Memtest wrote some memory. Then it tried to read it back. If things were good, it would have read a hexadecimal value of 62fb9344. Instead, it got a hexadecimal value of 62fb934c. Mathematically, 62fb934c - 62fb9344 = 8. 8 is a power of two. (2 to the power of 3 is eight.) Somewhere, the third bit from the end of a chunk of memory didn't work right. Memtest doesn't report such problems for no reason, so let me repeat that critical conclusion: your hardware didn't work right.

Obviously, if you care about your data, or results of whatever this computer may be assigned to do, this must be rectified if the computer is going to continue to be used.

In some cases, you might have entirely good components, but have some corrosion. You can try reseating the RAM. (Take the RAM out. Check for anything visibly not right (namely: corrosion). Place it back in, right back in the same RAM slot that came from.) That actually helps in some cases where oxidization leads to problems. After doing that, re-test.

Note that if you have 1 good pass, that dosen't mean perfection. Sometimes Memtest catches things on a later pass (more commonly in the first 3-4 passes).

Otherwise, it looks like you have bad hardware. It could be your motherboard, or even your power supply (bad PSU), but most likely is a RAM stick. Try removing one RAM stick at a time (unless you need to remove two at a time due to dual-channel limitations that some motherboards have).

Once it seems like you have have identified which RAM stick is bad, try placing that RAM stick in again, preferably in another slot, to help determine whether it is the RAM stick (more likely) or the motherboard slot (probably less likely).

Note: Please do not boot your computer in a way that may write to the disk. (Booting off a bootable CD that is known to not write to the hard drive may be okay.) Understand that with bad RAM, bad data may be written to the hard drive, which could cause data corruption (including filesystem corruption) that may cause even more problems even after fixing the bad RAM. Treat this as urgent to minimize future problems (hopefully reducing those down to zero).