RAM question...is it bad?

[pud]

my bud gave me a 1gb stick of ddr 400, said his comp wouldnt even post with it and said I could try it n see if it worked for some stupid reason. Well windows will load, Ill get some error messages. Systool recognizes about 950mb of RAM...but i get lots of error messages, random restarts and firefox didnt have the address bar.
So is this a bad stick? I thought ram either worked or didnt?

edit: I have ddr400 currently, 2x 256mb.

 

[Kage]

The actual RAM is stored in many chips. If one of those chips is bad, you may not notice until that part of the RAM is accessed.

The fact you already had working RAM in, is probably why Windows booted, as it used the others to access. His on the other hand probably only had the 1GB memory in, so it had no choice but to access the bad parts of the module.

The RAM is bad. Just throw it

 

[pud]

no man, only had the 1gb stick in...shouldve posted that.
Was free, and wasnt expecting it to work..but Ive seen wierder things happen.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

If it's a name brand stick, you could send it in under warranty. . .

 

[pud]

lifetime? im pretty sure its old.....it says samsung on the chips BTW so im assuming thats what it is.

 

[A True Folder]

run memtest86+, it'll tell you if the module is bad or not

 

[pud]

Do I need more RAM? Ive got 512mb...i watched my available ram space in systool while performing my typical tasks and it dropped to 60MB.
Ive read that more ram wont do much unless you actually need it...but 60mb doesnt seem like much left.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

It would be a safe bet to say you could use more memory. 512MB really isn't much considering today's resource intensive games and apps. 1GB would be a nice upgrade, 2GB would be best.