DDR Tester?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jethro
  • Start date Start date
J

Jethro

I suspect I am having memory failures. My machine has been crashing,
then restarting, on its own. I have replaced the MOBO and CPU and
PSU. I have changed HDDs. The machine still crashes. Now I am
thinking my DDRs are failing. I have two, one 512 and one 128.

I want to run a diagnostic against the DDRs, but I can't find a free
one via Google.

Can anyone point me to a free diagnostic that I can download and run?
That is any good that is.

Thanks

Jethro
 
Jethro said:
I suspect I am having memory failures. My machine has been crashing,
then restarting, on its own. I have replaced the MOBO and CPU and
PSU. I have changed HDDs. The machine still crashes. Now I am
thinking my DDRs are failing. I have two, one 512 and one 128.

I want to run a diagnostic against the DDRs, but I can't find a free
one via Google.

Can anyone point me to a free diagnostic that I can download and run?
That is any good that is.

Thanks

Jethro
Click to expand...
memtest86 seems to be highly recommended in these groups.
http://www.memtest86.com/
 
Jethro said:
I suspect I am having memory failures. My machine has been crashing,
then restarting, on its own. I have replaced the MOBO and CPU and
PSU. I have changed HDDs. The machine still crashes. Now I am
thinking my DDRs are failing. I have two, one 512 and one 128.

I want to run a diagnostic against the DDRs, but I can't find a free
one via Google.

Can anyone point me to a free diagnostic that I can download and run?
That is any good that is.

Thanks

Jethro
Click to expand...

You might consider turning off automatic restarts (assuming this is XP),
then make a note of the error you get on the blue screen. This can sometimes
help pinpoint the cause.
 
You might consider turning off automatic restarts (assuming this is XP),
then make a note of the error you get on the blue screen. This can sometimes
help pinpoint the cause.
Click to expand...
Hey that's a thought!

Thanks

Jethro
 
Hey that's a thought!

Thanks

Jethro
Click to expand...


Well - I have tried both DDR testers, and neither showed any errors. I
have two machines with identical DDRs, and the second machine has
never crashed (as yet anyway). So I switched DDRs to see if machine
two will now crash. I also have disabled auto restart in both BIOS's.

We shall see I guess.

Thanks

Jethro
 
I suspect I am having memory failures. My machine has been crashing,
then restarting, on its own. I have replaced the MOBO and CPU and
PSU. I have changed HDDs. The machine still crashes. Now I am
thinking my DDRs are failing. I have two, one 512 and one 128.

I want to run a diagnostic against the DDRs, but I can't find a free
one via Google.

Can anyone point me to a free diagnostic that I can download and run?
That is any good that is.

Thanks

Jethro
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that ANY piece of faining hardware can cause a BSOD.
Video card failures are pretty common, and very often cause crashes.

There are also a large number of driver-related causes, and a few
plain software causes.
 
Thanks you two. I am running memtest86 right now - so far no errors.
Seems to take a long time - like hours.

MS's looks good too. I will download/save/maybe run that one too.

Jethro
Click to expand...


If it finds any errors at all...the RAM can generally be considered as bad.
RAM test will run indefinitely...but if it does not find any errors after a
few hours...
the RAM is probably OK...

If the RAM tests ok.it might still be slightly marginal..the machine may run
OK is slightly underclocked
 
Keep in mind that ANY piece of faining hardware can cause a BSOD.
Video card failures are pretty common, and very often cause crashes.

There are also a large number of driver-related causes, and a few
plain software causes.
Click to expand...


As I said, I have switched DDRs - so far so good - after an hour. I
hadn't thought of the video card. That's another item that I can
switch if and when. Both machines have similar video cards (AGP).
Thanks again for your helps

Jethro
 
Jethro said:
I suspect I am having memory failures. My machine has been crashing,
then restarting, on its own. I have replaced the MOBO and CPU and
PSU. I have changed HDDs. The machine still crashes. Now I am
thinking my DDRs are failing. I have two, one 512 and one 128.

I want to run a diagnostic against the DDRs, but I can't find a free
one via Google.
Click to expand...

www.MemTest86.com
www.MemTest.org (newer version of MemTest86, called MemTest+)
www.GoldMemory.com (shareware that nags until you pay)

I've had a couple of modules pass MemTest86 but fail Gold Memory, and
vice-versa, so I always test with both diagnostics, and I run each one
overnight because some errors can take hours to show up, in one case
4-5 hours. Also most BIOSes set the 1T/2T command rate to 2T, even
when the module is rated for 1T and the SPD default timings are
chosen. So when a module is rated for 1T (almost all are), I manually
set the BIOS to this. 2T won't cause a noticeable slowdown, but for
testing, 1T seems to reveal errors a lot faster.
 
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