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Gossamer · Oct 5, 2006, 12:33 PM

I've been working on this thing for weeks, and I'm stumped. It's a Dual 2.0 G5, 8x512MB=4GB (OWC RAM), 160GB SATA, etc.
It started a while back with applications like Safari or Mail randomly quitting. So I tried a nice full reinstall of 10.4.7, but the problems persisted.
I did a test with Rember, and came up with some errors, so I spent a lot of time test a pair of sticks at a time, until I got down to the two that should have been causing the errors. I put them in, and they passed. So I put all 8 sticks in, and it passed about 4 tests in a row. After each test, I would restart, then test again, and it worked four times in a row with no changes. Then, I tried once more and got a bunch of failures. I tried again, and Rember locked up.
I don't exactly know what to do here. Sometimes, like right now, it will pass all tests, and sometimes it will fail, and sometimes Remeber will lock up when "Attempting Memory Lock."
The G5 is still under Applecare, but if it's the third party RAM, then it's not covered, right? I don't know what to try next. Any help?

Big Mac · Oct 5, 2006, 04:25 PM

Third Party RAM would be covered by its own warranty. if you narrowed it down to the two DIMMs that are problematic, then you've most likely found your problem. Take them out, run Rember a good number of times to confirm it, then seek replacement. That's what I'd do.

hookem2oo7 · Oct 5, 2006, 04:30 PM

the problem with that is he tested all 3 pairs of ram and none of them failed, so he tested the last pair and they didnt fail either...

Gossamer · Oct 5, 2006, 06:07 PM

Originally Posted by hookem2oo7

the problem with that is he tested all 3 pairs of ram and none of them failed, so he tested the last pair and they didnt fail either...

Exactly.
I don't know if it's a logic board issue, or a RAM issue, or whatever. Any pointers?

Big Mac · Oct 5, 2006, 06:35 PM

It's much more likely the RAM than the logic board.

Gossamer · Oct 6, 2006, 01:39 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

It's much more likely the RAM than the logic board.

Is there any reliable way to figure out which chip/s is/are bad? The whole swapping them in and out and Rember testing is extremely unreliable and time consuming, as I've found out over the past few weeks.

seanc · Oct 7, 2006, 06:20 AM

Have you tried using Memtest instead?

hookem2oo7 · Oct 7, 2006, 09:43 AM

rember is a gui frontend for memtest. I prefer apple hardware test's memory test rather than testing it from within the OS.

seanc · Oct 7, 2006, 10:41 AM

Yes but Memtest does it outside of the OS X gui which might make it more reliable

Gossamer · Oct 9, 2006, 12:06 PM

Originally Posted by seanc

Yes but Memtest does it outside of the OS X gui which might make it more reliable

Is there a way to run memtest without logging in, that way the finder/dashboard/etc don't take up any RAM?
I tried TechTool which was included with AppleCare, but it just did a little quick test and passed the RAM, it's nowhere near as thorough.

seanc · Oct 9, 2006, 12:08 PM

Well the last time I ran memtest you had to run it in single user mode, so yes.

Gossamer · Oct 12, 2006, 01:55 PM

Okay, we went ahead and got 4x1GB sticks for it, and it's passing memory tests left and right now, so it looks like the RAM was at fault.