Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: bloom25 on December 16, 2001, 01:37:00 AM
-
Do any of you know of any freeware (or shareware) ram testing utilities that work in Win2k?
My P3 450 system here gave me a black screen on Windows 2k bootup and checked the file system and removed a .tmp file. Concerned I ran a standard scandisk, which showed no problems. After the next reboot when I was looking at the application log files the system locked up totally. (No reponse to Ctrl-alt-del, which in win2k is usually not good.) Next I decided it'd be good to run a complete (sector scan) scandisk, which uncovered one minor error in a file and corrected it, but no bad sectors. This in my mind rules out the harddrive for the most part.
My guess at this point is it was either a bug, or maybe a bad stick of ram. (I put a new 128 MB stick in when I installed win2k on this machine a week ago.) Unfortunately I don't have access to a ram testing utility here, so I wanted to know if any of you guys knew of one?
(My only other guess is that the video card might be going out.)
Tonight I installed quite a few programs on this system, they *could* be related. First I installed AH on this partition and it seems to work fine. After a reboot I installed a new critical update from microsoft released on the 13th (not on Windows Update yet) that fixes a number of serious IE 6 (and IE 5.5) security holes. This patch required a reboot, and it was on the next reboot that the "black screen" startup hard drive check occured. This patch has a file name of q313675. I'd be wary of installing it, even though Microsoft deems it critical, as it may be the root cause. :confused:
System:
P3 450 on Intel SE440BX-2 board
256 MB PC 100 ram
20 GB WD ATA 100 drive
Win 2k sp2
Diamond Viper V770 Ultra running 12.41 drivers
-
i use mem test v2.7 but i'm not sure where i got it. you make a boot disk so it works with any OS i think.
[ 12-16-2001: Message edited by: capt. apathy ]
-
Memtest86 is a free stand-alone bootable utility.
It catches more errors than most testing programs. By using a bootable floppy, you can tell for sure if the problem lies with the memory or the operating system.
Memtest86 (http://www.teresaudio.com/memtest86/memt28.zip)
A must have utility for anyone <me> using the ECS K7S5A mobo. ;)
-
Here are two sites to download memory tester's.
hcidesign.com and www.simmtester.com (http://www.simmtester.com) this one you can make a booter disk and test your memory.
Jag34
[ 12-16-2001: Message edited by: Jag34 ]
-
There's a facility in Spain that tested RAM once, but strangely they found nothing wrong with him. ;)
SOB
-
LOL!
-
Originally posted by SOB:
There's a facility in Spain that tested RAM once, but strangely they found nothing wrong with him. ;)
SOB
This is quite true, but you left one other finding out. They didn't find anything right about him either! <GDR> :D
(http://www.13thtas.com/mav13sig.jpg)
-
memtest is good. It caught a bad stick of 128mb pc133 I had when Memdoc did not.
Memtest creates a boot disk that you use and it runs the various test before Windows or any OSload.
Westy
-
Well I used Simmtester V1.45 last nite and it didn't catch the bad stick of ram ... if it did its job it would off saved me about 5 hours of time.
Memtester would have to be better.
sprint