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Thread: Memory Testing Tool

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    Senior Member ajbrun's Avatar
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    Arrow Memory Testing Tool

    I'm pretty certain one or more of my two sticks of 512 MB memory sticks is faulty in some way. I've tried memtest, and it does come up with some errors, but it doesn't tell me which memory stick is faulty without me taking them out one by one. Is there a more user friendly program that anyone knows of?

    I keep getting kicked out of both guild wars and CS:S, and not the FEAR demo won't work either.

    Thanks .

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    Try them one at a time then?
    I've not seen any really good RAM testers, but then again, they have a simple job, so you can't really do much with the interface...

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    Senior Member ajbrun's Avatar
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    OK, I read somewhere that memtest86 wasn't conclusive. Ie, a few errors might not necessarily mean there's a problem. Is that true?

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    Treasure Hunter extraordinaire herulach's Avatar
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    Memtest, or metest86 is really the only one ive ever used. Anything else id be a little sceptical about. I notice youre using two differnet brands, make sure the timings are set to match the slower stick then try rerunning memtest

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    Memtest86 clearly shows the location of the memory error. if you have a gig of ram and it never gets errors past 512mb, then the fist stick of ram is almost certainly at fault. if it erros are only after 512mb then the scond stick is probably at fault.

    Memtest86 is not conclusive, but ANY error in memtest is a real problem with something. There can be errors without memtest finding them, but memtest does not make fake errors.

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    Senior Member ajbrun's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by herulach
    Memtest, or metest86 is really the only one ive ever used. Anything else id be a little sceptical about. I notice youre using two differnet brands, make sure the timings are set to match the slower stick then try rerunning memtest
    I just un-did my overclock that someone from the internet helped me to do. I didn't really understand it, so it's probably best I left it all alone.

    Anyway, before I un-did it, it wouldn't even open the FEAR demo. Now, it opens it, but when it loads I get a BSOD with a memory error. It then dumps memory to disk and restarts. I'm going to run memtest tonight and see what it comes up with.

    Thanks for the info about which stick the errors belong to .

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    Senior Member ajbrun's Avatar
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    I've just ran it for 10 minutes, and got 70 errors. The highest I saw was 256MB, so it looks like I'm going to need some more memory.

    In relation to buying memory, would it be a good idea to replace the fulty 512MB stick with a 1GB stick so I'd have 1.5GB memory instead, or would that be too much for my system? Would it need that much?

    Or is it just best to get another 512MB so it matched the other one I have?

    Thanks again .

    EDIT, while I remember, I'm going to run memtest again overnight (longer than 10 mins). Is there any way to scroll down the errors, as you can only fit about 5 errors on the sceen to look at at once.
    Last edited by ajbrun; 25-08-2005 at 12:55 PM.

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    Senior Member ajbrun's Avatar
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    I took out the stick in slot 1 last night (which happened to be the crucial), and ran memtest again with the remaining stick. It still came up with errors, but know where near as many as before. This time I ran it for 11 hours 45 mins, and it came up with 12 errors, 10 of those were the same as it went through the test cycle many times.

    Does that mean that that memory stick is faulty also, or is that not enough errors for it to be considered faulty?

    Thanks.

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    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    you should get no errorrs at all, it could be board cpu or ram.

    try memtest86+ its better than memtest.

    try each stick on its own too.
    throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)

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    I'd try each stick on it's own.. In dual channel mode the sticks aren't read sequentially so your errors would be (possibly) spread over both sticks with no way to tell between them.
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  11. #11
    Mike Fishcake
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    Quote Originally Posted by oralpain
    Memtest86 clearly shows the location of the memory error. if you have a gig of ram and it never gets errors past 512mb, then the fist stick of ram is almost certainly at fault. if it erros are only after 512mb then the scond stick is probably at fault.
    Are you positive that's how it works?

    (oh, and we use Memtest here all the time as well - generally a very good indication of memory errors)

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    On Another note you could downlaod the Ultimate Boot CD (Google UBCD) This has various memory testing tools.

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    Lovely chap dangel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Fishcake
    Are you positive that's how it works?

    (oh, and we use Memtest here all the time as well - generally a very good indication of memory errors)
    Memtest et al can only tell you what address the error occured at, and if your memory isn't sequential (stick one 0->512mb, stick two 512->1024mb) how the heck is it going to know?
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    Have you tried changing the timings of the RAM or perhaps slightly increasing the voltage to the memory? Maybe loosen the timings and put .1 more volts through to see if you get less errors?

    Also if you're running two sticks that aren't identical then that may be causing a problem.
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    Senior Member ajbrun's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kempez815
    Have you tried changing the timings of the RAM or perhaps slightly increasing the voltage to the memory? Maybe loosen the timings and put .1 more volts through to see if you get less errors?

    Also if you're running two sticks that aren't identical then that may be causing a problem.
    I know nothing about timings.

    My plan now is to try metest86+ or whatever the new one is on both of my sticks individually. One tonight, and the other sometime tomorrow. By tomorrow night, I should know what I'm going to need to buy.

    Thanks guys .

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    Treasure Hunter extraordinaire herulach's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ajbrun
    I know nothing about timings.

    My plan now is to try metest86+ or whatever the new one is on both of my sticks individually. One tonight, and the other sometime tomorrow. By tomorrow night, I should know what I'm going to need to buy.

    Thanks guys .
    In that case, first things first, try in both dual channel and not. Dont go buying anything till youve exhausted all your other options.

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