Do my computers have bad RAM or what?

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Two of my computers are near unusable because they can't run anything properly.

An example: I ran sn0wbreeze on one of the broken PCs and it came up with about 10 errors. I ran it on another PC and it worked just fine.

I installed Ubuntu on one and it's completely screwed. It boots, but hardly anything will run and it won't let me shut down. It's a fresh install and when I checked the install disk for errors, none were reported.

Problems also occur when I'm just running Windows. Once, I booted it, and some sort of Windows system process crashed on boot and it reverted to classic mode. Then it came up with errors for pretty much anything I ran. This is on a fresh install of Vista, and again, the install disc is fine.

In fact, the second broken computer won't even let me install Ubuntu or Windows. It crashed when I ran the install disks. My other computers work fine with them.

Since everything goes wrong whether I'm running from the hard drive or a disk, it seems to be something wrong with other hardware in the computers. Would I be right in assuming I have dead RAM? How would I go about running a memory test?

"memtest86+" should be in the Grub menu, and on the Ubuntu Live CD menu. You can download memtester to run a similar test from the command line, and there are similar utilities that run in Windows.

If your faults are intermittent, then dirt on connections and poor power are possible. Unplugging and re-inserting the connectors is often enough to clean dirt. If you have many extra devices, then the power supply may be insufficient, especially at boot-up when everything spins.

+1 on Memtest.

Standard practice on any new PC or new RAM is to run it to see if it finds any errors.

It's odd, but RAM can test as good from the POST, but have discrete single-bit errors that corrupts software on the HDD over time.

One of PCs has a memtest option when I boot it up, so I'll run that and look for a program for the other one too, then I'll report back. Thanks

The memtest option in POST is rudimentary at best. Your RAM error would have to be significant enough to fail the whole chip.

Cheap memory isn't always bad, but the more expensive brands more completely test their product before shipping to remove bad product.

The RAM in both of them is what came with the computers, but one is about 8 years old and the other was purchased cheaply from a computer fair.

I think I might have that kind of problem. I have recently had a few "ntldr not found" errors and a rattling fan at startup, but a couple of resets eventually get past that.

Can be a lot of things but testing the RAM is a good start. First in the computer, then find another computer and test it in that one. If it is faulty on both computers, than the RAM is as good as dead. When it still works at the other computer, it is probably something with the motherboard, then it is time to find a new one...