I recently got a new MBP refurb and for the past several weeks had been experiencing lots of crashes and strange behavior. For example, Safari would crash about 50% of the time when I visited the 'new' facebook page, but not the old one. iTunes would crash EVERY time I visited the iTunes store. I tried all the system updates and several reboots to no avail. I was getting ready to reformat entirely when I thought to go ahead and switch out to the 4gb of ram I had recently purchased (OCZ from buy.com). Switched the computer off, replaced the ram, turned it back on, and voila, no crashes at all in the past 2 days. Could a bad ram module really cause applications to crash persistently and predictably? I always thought it would cause random problems, driver issues, lockups, etc. By the way, the RAM I pulled out is labeled Samsung. Should it say Apple??
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Can bad RAM make Safari and iTunes crash predictably?
- Thread starter hari-bhari
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I've seen behaviour such as that caused by poor connections between the RAM and its socket. A bit of cleaning solvent and some spirited re-seating have saved the day. It's possible that the RAM was bad but my guess would be that it was the connector.
Now you appear to have the issue sorted, try some RAM hungry work. Rip a DVD and burn it. If it stays stable through that, you're probably good to go.
Now you appear to have the issue sorted, try some RAM hungry work. Rip a DVD and burn it. If it stays stable through that, you're probably good to go.
I also forgot to mention I ran a pretty thorough 3 hour RAM test in single user mode on boot, and it did not detect any errors with the original RAM. I guess I can take it back to Apple and have them swap it out so I have a safe backup.