Shoutout to the older tech who told me reseating RAM is not always the fix
Back when I started at the shop on 5th street, I used to pull and reseat every stick before digging deeper, and half the time it was a dead CMOS battery or a swollen cap on the board. Cost me 20 minutes a ticket until he made me test the battery first with a $12 multimeter. Any of you still see folks skipping the cheap checks because reseating feels like the go-to move?
The "$12 multimeter" bit is the real lesson here. I keep a cheap one in my bag just for CMOS batteries and it has saved me more time than any fancy tool I own. First thing I do now is check the battery voltage, then look at the caps, then worry about RAM. If the board is older than five years, those two checks catch way more than reseating ever will. People skip them because yanking a stick feels like doing something, but a $2 battery swap beats 20 minutes of guessing every single time. Get in the habit of testing cheap stuff first and your tickets will go way faster.