MEMTEST86 - STOP RESPONDING, BAD MEM?

[lorinser75]

Hey guys,

Recently, I've just tried Memtest86 to test my memory in my old computer.
It is actually PIII 866 with MSI 815E Pro & (2) 256 Mb Memory PC133.

When I run the Memtest86, it stopped responding in Test#2.
I waited a while to see if it was still in progress, but after waiting about 15 min, it still had not changed. It just freezed, I couldn't even press any keys.

I am just wondering if that means my Memory is bad or I am having some hardware or compatibility issues here.
The computer run fine, and I never have any problem whatsoever. I am currently running win2k SP3.

I really appreciate any comments.
Thanks again.

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: lorinser75
Hey guys,

Recently, I've just tried Memtest86 to test my memory in my old computer.
It is actually PIII 866 with MSI 815E Pro & (2) 256 Mb Memory PC133.

When I run the Memtest86, it stopped responding in Test#2.
I waited a while to see if it was still in progress, but after waiting about 15 min, it still had not changed. It just freezed, I couldn't even press any keys.

I am just wondering if that means my Memory is bad or I am having some hardware or compatibility issues here.
The computer run fine, and I never have any problem whatsoever. I am currently running win2k SP3.

I really appreciate any comments.
Thanks again.

Your OS won't matter, granted you're running the program when you boot up. You are doing that, right?

 

[Ilmater]

Since you're not answering and I'm going home (my home computer is stability testing and not used for forum posting until it passes), I'll just say this. Put the program on a floppy or bootable CD. Then restart the computer. If you're still locking up, I'd assume that it's the RAM.

 

[lorinser75]

Originally posted by: Ilmater
Since you're not answering and I'm going home (my home computer is stability testing and not used for forum posting until it passes), I'll just say this. Put the program on a floppy or bootable CD. Then restart the computer. If you're still locking up, I'd assume that it's the RAM.

Hello there,
Thanks for your response. I am sorry I couldn't reply earlier, but to answer your question, I didn't have any application running bec. I put the program in the floppy and then boot from there (like you said). I guess I'll try it again, and go from there.

Thanks again for your help and I'll keep you posted.

 

[RalfHutter]

Let it run for a while. Some of the tests take forever, especially with 512MB of PC133 RAM.

 

[Taz]

I've have the exact same situation going on...the program hangs right at the beginning of test #2. I'm wondering if it's just a case of the program having a problem with hyper-threaded CPUs (I'm using the Intel 3.0 800Mhz processor). The reason I'm speculating on this is due to a note on the developer's site saying that Memtest86 does not work with multiple CPUs. Could it be that on certain boards and in certain configurations it's seeing a HT processor as multiple CPUs?

 

[Cybordolphin]

I too can not get memtest to run past #2.

Anyone know what else to use to check ram?

 

[RMich]

I too am having exactly this problem. Test 2 locks up memtest. You know it is locked up, because (a) you can't even quit the program, and (b) I let it sit during dinner to see if it would do anything. It didn't.

My motherboard is an Intel 865PERL, with a 2.6C processor and 2 x 512 meg DIMMS, Mushkin blue DDR400.

I also wondered about hyperthreading, so I disabled it in the bios. Disabling it in bios made no difference. On the memtest web site it says memtest will work on a dual processor system, but it will only use one processor.

I am having random crashes in Windows XP, with my desktop returning to 640x480. Windows says it is my video card driver. There is a LOOOONNNNGGGG thread on this over at Rage3d.com, and one thing ATI tells you to troubleshoot is your RAM, which is why I was testing mine.

To be sure my 9700 pro wasn't implicated in the memtest problem, I swapped in another video card. It made no difference.

 

[Viperoni]

I'm positive I ran memtest on test #2 on a XP1700+, ECS K7vmm2 Version 5.2A, and 256mb of generic SDRAM.

 

[Mark R]

Could be a faulty CPU or motherboard.

Memtest is such a simple program that I would expect a lockup to be strongly suggestive of a hardware problem.

 

[henryay]

Ok, this happened to me before, I searched for the answer and came up with:

DISABLE USB legacy support

and it would not stop crashing.

 

[RMich]

Disabling legacy usb support did the trick for me.

Thanks!