memtest86

Has anyone used this little peice of software from http://www.memtest86.com/

I got the free download, burned it onto a cd-rw, boot from it and it did its testing, then once its finishes it goes back to window. Where do I go to get its report? Because nothing appeared on the desktop, was I suppose to see it during the testing? If so, where do I look to see if my ram is good?

 

You can see errors while scanning

 

While it is running, you will see a table on the bottom with 7 columns
tst pass failing address good bad Err-bits Count Chan

If you run through the entire test (time depends on amount of memory) and there is a failure, these columns will have numbers on it in roow....if no errors occur there will be no rows.

If errors occur, the test reports which test failed (ie, moving inversions, 32 bit pattern), on which pass (if you don't stop it, memtest repeats each tests repeatedly--I think there are 7), where the memory occured (the address), etc....

If you did not notice it, you likely did not have errors

 

Hah, I thought memtest is supposed to run forever until you manually stop it.

 

it does run forever unless you stop it

 

damn, mine ran and i saw a bunch of numbers on the side which were the errors, and then a white screen appears and the compter went back into windows. Does that mean my ram is defective?

 

Check out my memtest86 guide in my sig. If you see ANY errors at all, then yes, the RAM is bad.

 

damn what should i do, the RAM looks like its bad because I keep getting BSOD of "stop errors." I bought my laptop from dell but it has past its warranty.

 

RAM often has a lifetime warranty, but I'm not sure if being from Dell overrides that. Otherwise, the only option is to buy new RAM You might only have to replace 1 of them, so test each module by itself, and if only one is bad, just buy 1 new one. RAM is pretty cheap, and since it's over a year old (assuming because warranty is over), it would probably be even cheaper.

What kind of system do you have and how much RAM?

 

I have an E1705, with 2 gigs of ram.

 

If it's only one of them that's bad, you should be able to replace it for ~$30.