A few times this year my computer will freeze then refuse to boot up again (power on, HD/Power lights/Ethernet light on but monitor is on standby and no other signs of activity). The way I "fix" the problem is unsteating and reseating one of my two sticks of ram (it's always the same stick).

I just want to know why this works. The stick itself seems pretty firmly in there, not like it was loose or unsteated on its own. My desktop stays put and it not subjected to trauma of any sort. This happens very infrequently (about once every month and a half), but it's still a bother. Apart from these incidents my computer is as stable as a rock with no other issues.

So, is it the stick itself? Maybe the slot it's in is loose? Goblins in my PC?

Thanks for your time.

Sounds like a hardware lockup, but your removing the ram is simply forcing a HARD poweroff instead of a soft poweroff. My guess is whatever component that is glitched is still holding a little power in its capacitors. Next time it happens, try this instead:

Turn computer off. Remove the powercord from PSU. Press the power button on your computer- The fans and lights should come on for a fraction of a second while all the capacitors discard their stored power reserve. Then plug the powercord back into the PSU and press the power button again.

I used to have a similar situation with my videocard, if it would lockup. Then computer would only restart if it was hard powered off.

Thanks for the advice, but I've already done that. Hell, the only reason I linked it to the ram is that I had done everything else under the sun (removed all devices except the graphics, ram, and cpu; did a hard poweroff like you described). I then removed the graphics and had been down to just the ram and the CPU, and when I removed that one stick of ram that did the trick.

Do you have a different slot you could put the RAM into? If not, try leaving it out entirely and see if it still locks up.

Ram is pretty cheap, if it seems to be just that stick, replace it.

I would recommend downloading & running the Windows Memory Diagnostic (WMD). You'll create a bootable disk & run the test outside of the operating system. Let it run a few times through (once is typically enough but on occasion more may be required). If it fails, run each stick individually, in both slots to determine the culprit. It's important that you do this because you want to discover whether the issue is a memory stick or if you have a failing memory socket. There are also occasions when both memory sticks are defective but this is rare. Hopefully you simply have a defective memory stick because they're relatively inexpensive.

I always knew Microsoft was holding WMDs.... hurr

Or use http://www.memtest.org/

It's included on like... every Linux LiveCD ever... I think. At least I know Ubuntu has it.