MemTest-86 errors

[GHacker]

😕 We have an almost new Tualatin server with 1GB RAM that was sent back to the vendor before being put into service for random lockups and reboots. They sent it back and said the memory was to blame. It seems to run Windows 2000 fine now (haven't worked with it extensively though) but I ran MemTest-86 v3.0 to be sure and it came back with errors and hung during the testing. I don't have the exact error message because I booted Windows back up after it hung but the thing I found odd was that all of the errors reported seemed to be in the last MB of RAM (1023.x MB). I'm wondering if this could be some type of reporting or configuration error with the testing parameters and maybe the RAM is actually OK. This version of MemTest-86 is supposed to be able to handle 2GB and more of RAM though. Does anyone have any in-depth knowledge of MemTest-86 and have any advice to offer? This is my first time using it but I ran it on another problem system with 256MB RAM and it came back OK. I can run the test again and get more specific about the errors if anyone thinks they can interpret the results for me. Or if you're confident the RAM is bad let me know too - I just have to have something intelligent to say if I'm going to try to send the server back again based on this testing. Any input will be greatly apreciated. Thanks.

 

[crypticlogin]

Have you tried any of the secondary commands while memtest's running? I remember you can jump to a specific test with one of the switches and if you remember the last test in sequence, you can go straight to that one and see if that doesn't produce anything different. The Memtest page can give the documentation you want.

Also, how many sticks is that 1gig of RAM? If you haven't already tried it, and if it's two or more sticks, try running memtest with one stick at a time. That way you can pin down if it's really bad RAM or some quirk with the memory range.

Or combine the two suggestions above. 😛

 

[Boonesmi]

if memtest is reporting errors then either the ram is running out of spec (and failing) or something is actually a faulty part

and its not unusual for all the errors to be at about the same place since its usually just one chip on the stick of ram that is bad

 

[GHacker]

🙂 Thanks for the responses thus far - the 1GB turned out to be two sticks so it's running test 5 (the one it failed) on the stick in slot 1 tonight and I think that one will be OK. The second stick may be a whole different story...