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[Haspen]

This pretty Christmas day, there were three blackouts!

After the third, I have noticed that my PC is running rather suspiciously slowly, so I decided to check on things. HDD is okay, same for fans and temperature (which hovers from 50 to 60C), RAM is 256...

Wait, what? I'm pretty sure this PC should have 448Mb, like it always had!

Even better, it started to shut down on random moments.

'What the fuck, PC, why thou die at me during this lovely Christmas day?' I was asking this myself. I decided to unplug everything and open the tower... gosh, the dust. It was cleaned out. And the villain behind this slowiness was... a ram stick popped out of the slot.

What.

I took it fully out and put it back in proper way. I start the PC and go to BIOS to quickly check - Io and behold, I have...

512Mb of Ram! WHAT.*

Now I need a proper and fairly rational answer to the question: What. The. Fuck.

Thanks for any help.

*It's not like I'm mad - actually, +64mb of ram is nice, but as far as I know RAM doesn't just appear out of nowhere!

PS: And no, it doesn't shutdown randomly anymore.

[Akura]

Not sure about the correlation between the power outages and the RAM stick popping out, but it looks to me you put it in wrong when you first installed it. 448MB seems like an odd amount to have. RAM slots are supposed to have a locking-in mechanism to prevent properly installed RAM from moving at all. I'm a bit surprised it worked in the first place(or that it didn't esplode).

[Burnt Pies]

448 isn't a number I'd associate with RAM.  Maybe that RAM wasn't put in properly when you got the PC?

Ninja'd

[Haspen]

Possibly that.

Actually, one side of the RAM card was loose. The 'shorter' one if it makes any clue.

It does have locking hatches - one was undone.

Also, the shop I got (or rather my sister got) this PC was rather local place, not a brand mark shop with shiny stuff.

[G-Flex]

448 isn't a number I'd associate with RAM.

He probably has shared video memory. 512MB - 64MB = 448MB.


Anyway, chips can sometimes "creep" out after numerous temperature fluctuations. Things expand and contract and can eventually move out of their original location. It's still likely the RAM was installed poorly to begin with, since the damn things clip in.