On Thursday 28 Aug 2003 8:21 pm, Tom Brinkman wrote: > On Thursday August 28 2003 08:55 am, Anne Wilson wrote: > > On Thursday 28 Aug 2003 1:41 pm, Ronald J. Hall wrote: > > > On Thursday 28 August 2003 01:22 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: > > > > > > <snip> > > > > > > > I know y'all believe memtest86 is _THE_ test, an I > > > > confess I run it first too. But it's a weak test. It sort'a > > > > sux. Better is mprime's #17, the torture test. Harder still, > > > > the acid test is, cpuburn's 'burnK7'. One or two passes with > > > > memtest is a breeze, run mprime's torture test thru test > > > > #1800 or so, run burnK7 for 25 minutes ..... then you know > > > > your hardware is stable. So far I am with an XP core at 2301, > > > > CL2.5-2-2-2 DDR427. > > > > > > Tom, I know you remember when I was having the spontaneous > > > reboot problems? Well, you're right about memtest - I ran it > > > overnight 2/3 different times and never found anything - > > > cpuburn....now thats *another* story! > > > > Care to tell us more? My granddaughter's 1-year-old (win98) box > > suffers from recurrent problems, and I'm wondering if this test > > would help. So - what's involved in running it, how risky is it, > > and what sort of reporting does it give? > > > > Anne > > All three apps, memtest86, mprime, an cpuburn have Windoze > versions. memtest is no risk, neither is mprime-17. Cpuburn OTOH, > really takes the cpu/cache/ram/motherboard/buses to the limit, an > then some. Read the warning http://users.ev1.net/~redelm/ An you > can d/l the software. For Mandrake, it's on your CD's. > > Still if you can't run the appropriate 'burn' module on your > (her) system, it's not stable IMO. Many store bought (ready made) > computers won't pass. Any laptop surely won't. There's no reportin, > the system either stays up or fails. Usually just a spontaneous > reboot. CPU temp monitoring durin the test is almost imperative. > If it gets too high, Ctrl+C will abort the test. > > For ready mades an laptops, I'd suggest a lengthly run of > mprime-17, the torture test. That's as close as you'll get. These > tools, mprime an cpuburn, are old overclockers tools to test > stability. Not really a check for Winblows faults.
Thanks, Tom. This is a custom-build from a local supplier, and I've just realised that it's not quite out of guarantee, so it's going back tomorrow, and I'll let them do the first round of tests. If they find nothing I'll start on your suggestions <g> Anne
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
