- May 19, 2011
- 17,720
- 9,603
- 136
I've ordered a laptop for a customer and experienced a brief problem that I thought that faulty memory might be the cause. It turned out to be a software issue, but my difficulty in getting this laptop to boot and run memtest86 is something I feel I still want to address as it will likely prove useful in future and I thought that people coming up with as many ideas as possible for any modern scenario might be helpful for other people in future.
The techniques that I can think of are:
1 - Try to interrupt the boot process by invoking the computer's boot menu / pre Windows early startup options. This one is tricky because many computers give the user about a split second to press a key that varies between computer models. On say Lenovo and HP laptops I've found it to be common that pressing Escape before/around the time that the manufacturer's logo appears on the screen often works. Not this one of course!
2 - The technique that seems easiest - boot into Windows 10/11, then when as you're about to click on the 'restart' option hold down the 'Shift' key on the keyboard. Have the intended boot device plugged in at this point. This causes the computer to reboot then instead of starting Windows, Windows will present you with various boot-related options (one notable one is access to the UEFI BIOS) such as booting from an alternate device. When presenting a list of boot devices, Windows will sometimes ID the boot device model number and sometimes just say 'USB HDD', which usually works for say a memory stick.
3 - Partly by leveraging option 2 you can play with the boot order in the BIOS to move the Windows boot manager and the normal boot device further down the list leaving all the USB-related options to be attempted first. There are potential security implications in some scenarios of not changing this one back to the defaults (let's not discuss that here).
4 - I'm proceeding on the assumption that all systems we're talking about these days are UEFI capable btw. One potential option is to change the boot system to non-UEFI and boot some kind of memory testing program that's pre-UEFI, but while the desktops I normally build have the option to not boot UEFI, the laptop I've been working with is UEFI only; I can switch off secure boot FWIW but that's not needed for memtest86 7.4 and later.
5 - If you have practical access to the internals of the computer, plug in another boot device into an available SATA/M.2 port? Even then you've still got to contend with boot options to tell the computer to boot from that device, though unplugging the normal boot device can help railroad the computer into boot from the desired device.
I think that's all the techniques I can think of. I've tried to boot memtest86 7.4 from USB CD and I've tried the latest version of memtest86 created via their preferred method onto USB. The USB CD method results in the laptop obviously attempting to boot from the CD (lots of good CD reading noises), but then a blank screen and nothing. I couldn't even get the laptop to acknowledge the USB memory stick's existence via technique 2. I know the stick works because I plugged it into my desktop and it started memtest86 (in response to @TheELF , I've double-checked the stick booting from my computer and it is booting via UEFI) . Out of curiosity I'm going to try and get the laptop to boot from a Linux install image (edit - this worked... I still wonder why I'm having so much difficulty with memtest86...).
The techniques that I can think of are:
1 - Try to interrupt the boot process by invoking the computer's boot menu / pre Windows early startup options. This one is tricky because many computers give the user about a split second to press a key that varies between computer models. On say Lenovo and HP laptops I've found it to be common that pressing Escape before/around the time that the manufacturer's logo appears on the screen often works. Not this one of course!
2 - The technique that seems easiest - boot into Windows 10/11, then when as you're about to click on the 'restart' option hold down the 'Shift' key on the keyboard. Have the intended boot device plugged in at this point. This causes the computer to reboot then instead of starting Windows, Windows will present you with various boot-related options (one notable one is access to the UEFI BIOS) such as booting from an alternate device. When presenting a list of boot devices, Windows will sometimes ID the boot device model number and sometimes just say 'USB HDD', which usually works for say a memory stick.
3 - Partly by leveraging option 2 you can play with the boot order in the BIOS to move the Windows boot manager and the normal boot device further down the list leaving all the USB-related options to be attempted first. There are potential security implications in some scenarios of not changing this one back to the defaults (let's not discuss that here).
4 - I'm proceeding on the assumption that all systems we're talking about these days are UEFI capable btw. One potential option is to change the boot system to non-UEFI and boot some kind of memory testing program that's pre-UEFI, but while the desktops I normally build have the option to not boot UEFI, the laptop I've been working with is UEFI only; I can switch off secure boot FWIW but that's not needed for memtest86 7.4 and later.
5 - If you have practical access to the internals of the computer, plug in another boot device into an available SATA/M.2 port? Even then you've still got to contend with boot options to tell the computer to boot from that device, though unplugging the normal boot device can help railroad the computer into boot from the desired device.
I think that's all the techniques I can think of. I've tried to boot memtest86 7.4 from USB CD and I've tried the latest version of memtest86 created via their preferred method onto USB. The USB CD method results in the laptop obviously attempting to boot from the CD (lots of good CD reading noises), but then a blank screen and nothing. I couldn't even get the laptop to acknowledge the USB memory stick's existence via technique 2. I know the stick works because I plugged it into my desktop and it started memtest86 (in response to @TheELF , I've double-checked the stick booting from my computer and it is booting via UEFI) . Out of curiosity I'm going to try and get the laptop to boot from a Linux install image (edit - this worked... I still wonder why I'm having so much difficulty with memtest86...).
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter