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From: bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Can Windows damage hardware (RAM)?
Message-ID: <13920@as0c.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 15 Feb 91 16:34:50 GMT
References: <1991Feb12.220834.1991@syssoft.com>
Reply-To: bwb@sei.cmu.edu (Bruce Benson)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 26

In article <1991Feb12.220834.1991@syssoft.com> tom@syssoft.com (Rodentia) writes:
>Ever since I was a little hacklet, I had been told software
>cannot damage hardware (walking disk drives excluded).  Imagine
>my surprise when my next door neighbor installed windows on his
>2.5Mbyte 16MHz 386, ran notepad, and POOF!  He got a crash, and
>whenever he boots, the RAM test fails after 512K (the point 
>where it starts accessing the 2Mbyte expansion slot RAM).

I installed Windows on a no-name 286/12 that had 150ms ram.  Windows would
cause a parity error, but no other DOS program I ran would - and the
boot-up test always passed it.  When I de-turboed down to 8mhz I had no
problem with windows.

I suspect windows gave my memory a better workout then the built-in ram
diagnostics.  

Bruce




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