bad RAM? prove it with a crash dump?

[Boris Kochergin]

Atom Smasher wrote:
> i suspect i've got bad RAM but memtest has run through several dozen 
> iterations without a problem. my (3 year old) laptop will run for a 
> few days or weeks and then crash/freeze/hang. i've enabled crash dumps 
> and i'm wondering if/how the dump might be able to (dis)prove that the 
> RAM is bad. any ideas?
>
> thanks...
>
My experience with bad memory is that if it causes the machine to crash, 
it won't always happen while the machine is running the same process (or 
kernel thread)--so look for it crashing in a wide variety of places--and 
upon inspection of the core dump, a pointer somewhere will be pointing 
to garbage.

-Boris