Laptop & Desktop - Recurring blue screen “Memory Management” error

Laptop & Desktop - Recurring blue screen “Memory Management” error

Problem

A customer receives recurring BSOD errors, the error code is given as “Memory Management” when displayed.


Resolution

This kind of blue screen suggests there may be problems with the RAM. Below are some ways to test this but one should be aware that there can be other causes also that should not be overlooked.


Method 1 - Running Windows integrated memory diagnostic tool

  1. Right click Start button or press WINDOWS+X -shortcut, then select Event Viewer.
  2. In the Event Viewer, select Event Viewer (Local) > Windows Logs > System.
  3. Then click the Find... link in the far right task pane.



  4. Then in the pop up dialogue enter “MemoryDiagnostic” without the quotes.



  5. Then click “Find Next” button. Your diagnostic results will display at the bottom of the window.
  6. If there are no errors in the log you may see the message below, this means no errors have occurred. 

      

Method 2 - Running Memtest86

This method requires creation of boot media and can take a while to carry out but provides better detection of bad memory.


Step 1 - Downloading and creating bootable media

  1. With your browser download Memtest86 using this link: https://www.memtest86.com/downloads/memtest86-usb.zip
  2. Right click and choose Extract All in the context menu.
  3. Then open the newly created folder and run ImageUSB.exe.
  4. In the dialogue choose the USB device to write to (this will overwrite all data on the USB stick).
  5. Below then choose the radio button “Write Image to USB drive”.
  6. Then below that make sure that the drop box for “Select image…£” is shown pointing to the “Memtest86-usb.img” file.
  7. Then click the Write button below that, progress should be shown below.
  8. You are now ready to use the USB stick to boot into memtest86 to test RAM.

Step 2 - Booting with Memtest86 USB media

  1. Plug in the USB media, if the computer is on please shut it down.
  2. Then press power and either press F10 or similar to get into the boot menu whilst the computer is starting up and select the USB drive.
  3. After it has booted run the memtest86 should then go into testing the RAM which may take some time.
  4. Once the test is complete please note down/take picture of results. Bad RAM will be indicated in red as per image below shows.