On Saturday 09 March 2002 01:48 pm, dfox wrote: > The utility is calleed memtest86, so google for it. I think there is > a disk image on the Mandrake CD but I'm not sure.
If y'all have ML 8.x to 8.2, a memtest86-??mdk..rpm is on your Cd's. If you install this rpm, it'll add memtest86 as a boot option. I've had problems usin it this way tho. It's also much better to test hardware without loading your OS/file systems. Specially Linux/ext2, and any M$ Windoze product. File system corruption and/or Winblows registry corruption can occur. So, however you get memtest86, I'd advise copying it to a floppy and booting that, rather than booting to it on your harddrive from lilo. The tar.gz version has an 'installer' to do this for you, just read the doc. Mandrake's rpm will put a <memtest...bin> file in /boot, edit and run lilo to add it as a boot option. You can copy that or any other <memtest.bin> to a floppy by doin this in a term dd if=memtest-2.8.bin of=/dev/fd0 (this assumes you're in the dir where you have <memtest.bin>, and that your floppy is fd0 ) OTOH, 'mprime -m, 17' (Prime95's torture test) is a much better cpu/cache/ram tester, but it still won't "prove" your hardware as well as Cpuburn will http://users.ev1.net/~redelm/ Any software test of ram/memory is not entirely feasible. Only very expensive hardware test beds, that're specific to the ram being tested are accurate viable tests. Cpuburn will, like most other software testers, stress check the cpu/cache/ram all at once. Faulty systems can get by memtest86 fairly easily, even the Prime95/mprime torture test won't find all difficiencies ... but if Cpuburn doesn't find 'em, they're probly aren't any, ie 'bulletproof'. That's why I advise testing cpu/cache/ram from a memtest86 floppy first, keeping your OS/filesystem offline. If all's well, then try mprime's torture test. If you pass that, go for Cpuburn. Until a system passes Cpuburn, any problems, present or future, could be more likely be hardware than software, or at least you'll never really know "or is it somthing else" ;> -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
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