Unstable after RAM upgrade

I installed the same Patriot ram from Frys and had the same problem with system freezes. My original ram is Samsung brand, for what it's worth.

As I said I have the exact same symptoms with the OWC RAM. Putting in the original RAM stopped the freezing entirely. (But I still need to know if I should go with a replacement from OWC or a full refund to try another company.)

Wow, this new DDR3 memory paired with the new nvidia chipset is either even more sensitive than usual or there's a bad batch going around. My replacement OWC memory, even though it uses the same brand of chip (elpida) only a few serial numbers apart, is working perfectly so far.

I have installed the OWC 4GB upgrade. I have not experience any problems what's so ever.

But thanks for the heads up. I'll carry my old memory around with me just in case.

Is there any memory test program that it failed?

Mike

Also i am curious why after you install any ram, that before booting into your OS you don't run a program like memtest in single user mode. I have see many OS system hosed because of bad memory chips that boot but corrupt data. The latest version Tony's memtest OSX program cost $1.39 I believe and is worth every penny. Good luck,

Mike

That's what we've done. Memtest worked perfectly on mine but still locked up under normal use. My theory is that there is something else electrical going on with these dimms. The memory cells themselves are fine but there could be a short somewhere that takes the system down randomly. I never got a kernel panic or weird crashes that are indicative of bad memory, my system simply froze.

Hmmm

Well if you performed the memtest before booting in to the OS and it show nothing, then I haven't a clue.

My point is that I have seen some folks that boot into the OS and corrupt some little handle and have to do a OS lobotomy before even good memory runs correctly. I always do a Carbon Copy Clone before every hardware mod just in case.

Can you repeat the freeze? If so did it freeze when you put the old memory back?

Mike

I had issues with both OWC and Patriot RAM... MacBook 2.4Gz would freeze after a few minutes.. oddly in all my messing I ran for 3 hours with the Patriot RAM in but no battery and the case bottom on but not screwed down. I thought I was good to go but as soon as a put all the screws in the machine, it locked up 5 minutes after powering back on.

I have a buddy who we upgraded with Patriot last week and has not issues. We will try his RAM in my macbook tomorrow.

I ran a loop of Apple Hardware test overnight and it found nothing wrong with the chips. While they were in I could recreate the crash while in Quicktime. (Crashed three times within a few hours).

It hasn't crashed since putting in the original RAM and I've been using it heavily.

I bought the 4gb kit thats made by crucial for $129.35 shipped from http://www.priceguidenetwork.com/_search.php?page=1&q=CT2KIT25664BA1067

Ordered Mon shipped friday and they ship 2 day air so Ill have it Tuesday best price If found since crucial is selling the same setup for $147

If that's the exact memory you bought, it won't work. That's for DDR3 desktop systems.

The memory that came with the macbook has worked perfectly. In fact I'm back to using it as I have locked up twice now with the 2nd set from OWC. I'm going to try a set from crucial to see if it works better otherwise the problem seems to be with the macbook itself.

I got my macbook from the apple store last weekend and they couldn't upgrade the hard drive and didn't have the RAM. A couple of days later I ordered a 320G hard drive and 2-2G of the Crucial RAM. The hard drive came in first on Tuesday and I installed it and everything worked great. The RAM came in on Friday and immediately after installing it my computer has started freezing up. The only thing I have put on it is Firefox. I haven't moved any files over from my old computer yet or installed any apps. Twice it froze when all I had open was the system prefs and twice with no apps open at all. When it freezes the pointer is just stuck, the shortcut to force quit doesn't work and I just have to power off. Like I said, a couple of times after powering back on it did it again before I even had a chance to open any apps. Also, every time I set it down for a while, overnight, whatever and come back to it- it's frozen So apparently it freezes while asleep too. From what I read above others have had similar issues but while using more memory heavy applications and I didn't see where anyone else had trouble with Crucial RAM. Any ideas on what I should do? Has anyone called Apple, do they have any suggestions? This is so annoying, I have a brand new fancy laptop here and I'm using the old yellowed macbook.

So I went to my friend's house to day and pulled the 2 - 2gb Patriot sticks out of his Macbook (bought 3 days before mine) which has been working fine since the upgrade. we put the sticks in my mcabook and the thing froze almost immediately. I have been carrying apple laptops since the portable and have never seen this (3 different set of memory upgrades all fail). I am convinced there is either some sort of BIOS problem or a batch of lemons. Will spend the next two weeks on a trip with 2gb of RAM and then visit the apple store upon my return.

Makes me nervous as I have 4GB of RAM from OWC en route for my new MBP. I wonder if Apple spiked the punch with Antabuse so "other than Apple" RAM makes the new laptops sick?