New to Windows - advice on Ram  

NTN said:

Megahertz: "I'm an electronic engineer and never heard "degenerated because of the electrons have escaped"

Here you are!

Remanence in Semiconductor Devices Peter Gutmann IBM T.J.Watson Research Center
chrome-extension://hmigninkgibhdckiaphhmbgcghochdjc/pdfjs/web/viewer.html?file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.auckland.ac.nz%2F~pgut001%2Fpubs%2Fusenix01.pdf

DRAM and Electromigration p. 2-10 approx...

Could you please give me a link to the article

NTN said:

https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut0...s/usenix01.pdf

Hope this is better..

Thanks

- The article is 25 years old. Memory technology has changed drastically
- Haven't seen any mention to escaped electrons
- The conclusion: "Don’t store cryptovariables for long time periods in RAM. Move them to new locations from time to time and zeroise the original storage, or flip the bits if that’s feasible".

Memory is constantly refreshed

Everything degrades over time. RAM included and all electronic equipment. RAM has an advantage with lack of moving part, so they are pretty free of mechanical wear and tear.

But you can still find 20-25 years old RAM that is working, but not in the same speed as it was fresh.
Because of electromigration....(just a nicer word for escaping...)

And if the article is 25 years old that is not any point at all....


From 2011, some fresher..
In this study, commercial 512 Mb Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory (DDR SDRAM) modules from three progressive technologies - 130 nm, 110 nm and 90 nm - were selected for experimentation to investigate degradation trends as a function of scaling. High temperature, high voltage accelerated stress testing was performed to characterize DRAM reliability and failure rates. Retention time degradation over time as a function of stress was also studied.
Just a moment...

As to the Subject, I have a Toshiba Notebook from the mid-'90s running MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1, still a valid machine. If having trouble with programs properly running I've found many times that saving any open documents then either doing a Restart or Shutdown the Start works, clears out any data being held in RAM and gives a fresh start.