Memtest86 result - Should I replace memory

I have a Windows 7 machine (about 8 years old) that is locking up frequently for 1 minute or so and then coming back to life. During a lock up the mouse and screen are OK but no click or actions get any immediate results (e.g right click, open windows explorer, run TaskManager etc.). After a mintue or so the PC would spring back to life and all the "queued" actions would then happen in rapid sucession.
It has also started blue screen of deathing on sleep with INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR.
Eventually the machine crashed and failed to boot with "a disk read error occured".
I ran a MemTest86+ test for several hours with the result shown below. Basically 15 errors over 5 complete passes.
Should I replace the memory to address the above issues? Or are they likely to be unrelated?
Is this more likely to be a disk issue?

Update:
I pulled the disk and ran a chkdsk from another machine (result below). It looks OK?
I will run memtest86 on each RAM bar separately and see how that goes.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
259072 file records processed. File verification completed.
1170 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
2 EA records processed.
7 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
297754 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
259072 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
19342 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35387624 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
17 percent complete. (51934 of 259056 files processed)
Windows replaced bad clusters in file 51993 of name \SYSTEM~1_RESTO~1\RP96\A0033425.rbf. 259056 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
13140098 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.
122881153 KB total disk space.
69863092 KB in 139431 files.
91764 KB in 19343 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
365905 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
52560392 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
30720288 total allocation units on disk.
13140098 allocation units available on disk.

Ricibob

Posted 2018-06-02T16:12:45.990

Reputation: 123

1No, the first step is to swap around modules and see if the error moves. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams – 2018-06-02T16:18:40.360

The first symptom you mention (locking up for about a minute) is typical of Windows machines that don't have enough memory; they're unlikely to be affected by replacing the memory, you would need to either increase the total amount, or avoid using as much. If, after one of these freezes, Task Manager shows that the total amount of "committed" memory is more than the amount physically in the machine, that is probably what is causing that particular problem. – Harry Johnston – 2018-06-03T04:20:58.090

@HarryJohnston Its a MediaPC so only running MediaCenter or Netflix in a browser i.e not a huge memory load. Its run fine for 8 years and I look at TaskManager regularly - no sign of low memory. Any other ideas what could be causing the freeze? – Ricibob – 2018-06-03T21:11:11.347

@Ricibob, browsers tend to be the biggest memory hogs of all these days. Just to be sure, have you double-checked what the performance tab of Task Manager says the total amount of committed memory is just after one of those freezes? – Harry Johnston – 2018-06-03T22:37:30.503

@HarryJohnston Unfortunately I didn't specifically check committed memory after freeze. Generally though I have TaskManager running and globally "Physical Memory Usage" never goes above about half - so I don't think that is the issue? – Ricibob – 2018-06-05T12:50:01.103

What I'm hearing so far is possibly Disk, Power supply or Mobo issues. Not sure how to assess that better in order to replace one of those with confidence. – Ricibob – 2018-06-05T12:56:14.273

Probably I just need to bite the bullet on the disk and do a reinstall on a new disk and see how that goes. Thanks for help every one who contributed. – Ricibob – 2018-06-05T12:58:37.653

Answers

The symptom of unresponsible system seems unrelated to this memory error. Not having enough memory, mentioned in the comments causes slowing down due to swapping, but less likely freezing for a minute and continuing. I've seen that mostly on computers with old near death SSD drives or faulty HDD.

Before buying new memory you should run memtest with single modules to further delimit the problem to a single module and rule out it's not caused by the motherboard, instead.

But let's face this: it's an 8 years old computer. I'd consider replacing the whole machine instead of fixing it with spare parts. Something else will come up shortly, making this approach easily more expensive.

Esa Jokinen

Posted 2018-06-02T16:12:45.990

Reputation: 615

Tks for response. This is a lounge media pc - so its not under a lot of strain i.e only running either MediaCenter or Netflix - it has never run low on memory and has performed perfectly for 8 years - it only recently (last few weeks) started having these issues. So I figure its not just "low memory" - something is wrong - Im just not sure what. I've added a chkdsk result - but that looks OK. I will run memtest on each bar and post back. – Ricibob – 2018-06-03T14:24:58.963

Your comment about replacing it with a new PC is valid but I just don't have time to do that at the moment - Its a very custom build MediaPC and it will be lot of time and effort to rebuild. Also it is Win 7 with MediaCenter - which we still use - if we go to Win 10 then I loose that so I'd have to look at other media center alternatives - and I just don't have time to investigate that at the moment. – Ricibob – 2018-06-03T14:31:05.637

2I totally agree. It isn't the RAM itself. That would cause crashing applications, BSOD's and/or sudden reboots. Typically NOT freezes. Another possibility is power stability: Either PSU or the voltage regulators on the motherboard are starting to become unstable. This in turn leads to IO to/from the harddisk retrying and hence the lockups. Voltage regulators are common issues for Intel G3x en G4x chipssets from the Core2Duo days. (System could be one of those going by the age and the 2.4Ghz CPU and 400MHz DDR2 RAM.) – Tonny – 2018-06-03T14:44:52.230

@Tonny Yes its a Core@Duo E6600 CPU on a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R mobo (Intel P45, Intel ICH10R). Power supply is Corsair CMPSU-620HX. Any way to tell if its a PSU issue or a mobo issue? – Ricibob – 2018-06-03T21:08:12.607

@ricibob most likely the motherboard. I had exactly the same hardware with the same problem a couple of years ago. Problem got progressively worse and eventually the motherboard started to fry the RAM strips. – Tonny – 2018-06-04T10:11:29.593

This is a dead giveaway:

Windows replaced bad clusters in file 51993 of name \SYSTEM~1_RESTO~1\RP96\A0033425.rbf.

The most likely cause is a faulty hard disk drive, which could certainly also be the cause of the boot failure and might be causing freezes. It seems less likely to be cause of the bluescreens, but the only way to rule it out is to replace the disk. You may need to reinstall Windows too.

Unfortunately that doesn't entirely rule out the motherboard, because a faulty disk controller can look pretty much the same as a faulty disk. I don't recall ever seeing that actually happen, but a faulty motherboard could, in principle, explain all of your problems at once.

The only way to tell for sure would be to find a disk testing program that manages to detect the fault, then put the disk in a different machine and see whether it persists or not. Unfortunately last time I looked I couldn't find any really good third-party tools for testing HDDs, but depending on the model you might find something on the manufacturer's web site.

Harry Johnston

Posted 2018-06-02T16:12:45.990

Reputation: 5 054

As per Tonny's earlier comment, problems with the power supply is also another possibility. – Harry Johnston – 2018-06-04T07:48:35.277

I noticed that but wasn't sure if that was significant or not. I figured if it was then it would have been occampanied by other errors e.g bad file records, bad sectors etc... If the disk was going out wouldn't it be expected to see some more of those? – Ricibob – 2018-06-05T12:53:03.507