okay so the thing is i'm experiencing some lock-ups on my slackware box and i'm suspecting it's a bad memory module so i downloaded memtest in bootable ISO form, burned it to a cd, and it's running well...

my question is: how long is it supposed to run?? i mean, it started running automatically when the cd booted and it's done a few passes already but it's been running for hours and stuff... how many passes is it supposed to do?? or are you supposed to decide on your own when you've seen enough successful passes?? i was expecting to eventually see some message pop-up saying "your memory is good" or something like that... how does one determine when memtest is "done"?? how long does the test usually take??

If no errors than stop it after a few passes.
An overclocking forum I belong to uses only test 5.They use test 5 for conditioning ram as well so the cpu fsb can be raised.Conditioning requires a few hours of running.

You will see erors under the error line in digits.
Also it will list memory address space the errors occured.


Other lockup causes;
heat
failed pwr supply rails at load
heat
bad cpu
bad power supply or wireing
check capacitors on motherboard to see if there leaky

thanks for the reply ironwalker...

so the tests will continue indefinitely until one stops them??

my memtest crashed after a few passes... before the crash i had no errors on any pass... but then suddenly my screen was filled with the letter "e" and not even CTRL+ALT+DEL would work... so i have removed one of my ram sticks and well the freezing that i was having has gone away... i should probably run memtest again on the remaining ram stick to make sure it's fine... is it a bad idea to let the thing run all the tests it wants overnight, like so i could just check it when i wake up in the morning or will that be a little too much memtesting?? it's just hard to do this memtest during the day cuz it takes so long and people want to use the PC...

BTW, what's ram conditioning?

=)

Yes, memtest will run continuously until you stop it. You should let it run for at least a couple of passes, and so long as it does not encounter any errors, you can be confident that your RAM is OK. If memtest did detect errors, personally I'd recommend trashing the affected stick. (Of course, if it's under warranty or new, return it). -- J.W.

I use memtest86+ all the time to test computers. The thing about memtest is that if it finds errors you know the ram is bad (with some exceptions), and that if it runs without errors you still don't know for certain if it is bad or not.

There's no memory test better than memtest86+ that I know of.

The exception mentioned above deals with older motherboards. I've used memtest on some older boards where the system appears to recognize say high density single sided sdram sticks but reports errors and when you test those modules on other boards they pass the tests with flying colors.

I've seen low density, double sided, sdram fail on some boards but pass on others even though some ram passes on the older boards with flying colors.

My point isn't to make it so you don't trust memtest86+ but to encourage you to test that ram on another motherboard when you do have problems.

In most cases memtest86+ does generate a list of errors and it keeps a tally. So, the error you got was highly unusual. I've seen it do that one time and I believe it turned out to be the P4 processor turned out to be bad and the ram was good.

I've seen the motherboard cause memory errors with memtest86+ as well--as the motheroboard was bad.

In addition to that I have seen every stick I put into some board report bad in exactly the same spot. 5 different sticks of ram and the same errors at the same addresses. After further investigation it turned out that the problem was the processor and not the motherboard.

Hope that helps.