I learn something new everyday.
Of course, I’m not that bright, so it’s pretty easy. Today I learned that when good RAM goes bad it is possible that it could prevent the machine from POSTing at all. That is, bad ram in the right place can prevent the machine from even getting to the point where any video signal at all gets to the screen.
In my world prior to today, no video signal and no hard drive lights meant dead server in a really bad way. On this happy occassion cracking the box, yanking the first two sticks of RAM and restarting made everything ok again. Sometimes it is good to be somewhere where there are people lots smarter than you. This also illuminates the reason why I hate hardware so profoundly. One day it’s working perfectly and the next day it’s gone forever - sometimes for no reason at all, stored one electron too many. And you get your hands all greasy and nasty. Sure my keyboards a little gross and all, but at least I don’t have to wash my hands after working on it. Seriously.
