On Wednesday October 15 2003 06:05 pm, Terence J. Golightly wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I posted last month message "me thinks I got a virus". Well..
> I'm almost positive that I don't have a virus. I am still having
> the locking up problem and I downloaded memtest ISO burned it to
> a CD and ran the standard tests. It locked up on test 5 with
> errors in the 5 figures range. I ran it successfully by starting
> at 5 but the system crashed on 8. According to the documentation
> on the memtest86 web site, these are the crucial tests that
> shouldn't fail. Indicating that I have a bad DIMM. I read
> something about setting up memtest as a selection from the
> bootloader writing the bad memory blocks to disk and using
> another program/module to tell the kernel to not use that memory.
> Has anybody done anything like this? If not too involved I
> would like to try it before I buy new. In the event that this
> route is not feasible for any reason, would someone care to
> comment on the ram that they use and who make quality memory. I
> know that this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find
> them on the newbie mailing list archives. The search engine
> hasn't worked for me yet. If someone remembers the month I'll go
> back and check it out, no need to add any more bandwith like this
> sentence :).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Terry
First, remove the ram and clean the contacts. A pencil eraser is
good for this. Rub lightly, if it's decent ram the contacts are
gold. Blow out any dust from the mobo slots. Re-seat the ram and
check again. Try it in a different slot. If you have more than one
stick, change the order you install them, ie, swap slots around.
Still errors?.... then,
I've come to believe memtest86 is a very lenient ram check. So
if it found errors, the ram is surely bad, and probly will get
worse. Best to replace it. In answer to your question tho. Install
the Mandrake memtest86 rpm on your CD's (you never needed to get it
from their website). The rpm will install memtest86 and make it a
boot option in lilo and grub.
Boot to memtest86, and as soon as it's running, press the <c>
key for configuration. From memory, I believe you want to then
select 6, then 2, then 8. Check the docs, but this should restart
the test, log and report bad memory areas. Then you can add those
statements to lilo or grub to let the kernel know not to use them.
All of this works only if you are running one of the latest
Mandrake kernels with the 'badmem' patch. AFAIK, that means,
2.4.22-7mdk or newer. I know for sure the tmb kernels have this
patch, eg, 2.4.22-12.tmb.1mdk
I'd just replace the ram, and offer the old stuff to somebody I
didn't like ;) You can always depend on Crucial for quality ram.
http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=RAM
Corsair is good too,
http://www.corsairmicro.com/
A good measure is to buy better ram than you need. EG, if pc100
is required, buy pc133. Ditto, pc2700 is required, get pc3200.
Those are just consumer labels tho. Important ratings are ns
(nanosecond) and Cas rating. The lower the better. I recently
failed to follow my own advice, and now I'm stuck with some under
performing (no bad areas tho) Kingston junk till I get around to
replacin it.
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
