memtest86

[Him]

So I ran memtest86 for the first time the other day... It's still running. Is it suppose to take that long? Takes about 1 hour per MB. When I left for work today, it had 38MB done in 35 hours time. Is that how long it is suppose to take? I'm going to get new RAM soon (1gb) and I'm going to want to make sure it is error free, so I want to run the hell out of memtest on them, but I will be looking at almost 1000 hours! That is ridiculous. Should it take that long?

Also, when the test finished, does it just keep on going until you manually stop it?

 

[horndude]

shouldnt take that long, heck, you can write your own code to test memory and the program should only take about a minute

 

[desiboi]

That's way too slow. Make sure you don't have any programs opened, or any unneeded processes running.

 

[Him]

AHHHHHHH!!!!!! Mr. Horn, I'm no programmer. I havent the slightest CLUE when it comes to programming. Unfortunetely, I am a straight up Windows guy.

 

[horndude]

im not much of a programmer either, but im learning, its becoming a necessity with all the bad freakin code out there these days

 

[Him]

Yeah I suppose, but you're a Linux guy so you really need to know it. I really have no interest in programming, unfortunetely. It is tedious and monotonous to me, and I derive no pleasure from it. I really wish I did enjoy it, as it would be a great skill to have. I have tried to enjoy it, but I really cant.

You may not be much of a programmer, but I am NO programmer. I couldnt even tell you where to start in making the most basic of Viz Basic apps.

 

[CrucialLabs]

Uh, so no one told you that Memtest will never stop testing unless you stop it? Memtest is a redundent test program that will continue to run until you hit the ESC button, there is no end to it. So if after 11hrs you have no errors, then you never will. Stop the test.

 

[Him]

Huh... I did not know that. Is 11 hours universal no matter how much memory you have? Meaning, on my Laptop I have 256mb and on my desktop I have a gig. So does that 11 hours mean for both machines?

 

[Him]

That's way too slow. Make sure you don't have any programs opened, or any unneeded processes running.

memtest86 starts when you boot your computer. It dosent even touch Windows. You burn it to a cd, or floppy, and boot from that and it automatically starts.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Well I personally think it did the test around 20x, and when you looked it had only done 38 meg or whatever so you thought it was taking that long.

And a question for the crucial guy, I heard that it is best to disable your CPU L2 cache while testing your memory, because when your using a memtest program everything is running through your L2 cache theirfor a memory error will not \ is less likely to show,

Care to shed some light on this matter?