[opensuse] Memory diagnostic reliability
Does any one no how dependable the memory diagnostic is that comes on the opensues 10.3 dvd is/ My production environment crashed yesterday after some updates. After muck looking and reinstalling 10.3 I ram the memory diagnostics. It is reporting errors and before I go and by new memory I wanted to ask about its reliability. Thanks for any help. -- Russ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sunday 20 April 2008 00:09, Russ Fineman wrote:
Does any one no how dependable the memory diagnostic is that comes on the opensues 10.3 dvd is/ My production environment crashed yesterday after some updates. After muck looking and reinstalling 10.3 I ram the memory diagnostics. It is reporting errors and before I go and by new memory I wanted to ask about its reliability.
There are two ways to ask / answer this: 1) If Memtest86+ reports no errors, is the RAM error-free? 2) If Memtest86+ reports errors, does the RAM have errors? Question (1) cannot be definitively answered in the affirmative. Question (2) can! In other words, if Memtest86+ reports no errors when testing your RAM, you cannot definitively conclude there are no errors in your RAM, only that Memtest86+ did not detect any erroneous behavior during its tests. On the other hand, if Memtest86+ reports an error, you can be quite certain that there is an error in you RAM (or in your CPU or in your chipset or that there was an unusually high cosmic ray secondary burst in your vicinity while you were running the test...) Welcome to the "real world." (Not the MTV series...)
Thanks for any help. -- Russ
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sat, 19 Apr 2008, Randall R Schulz wrote:-
On the other hand, if Memtest86+ reports an error, you can be quite certain that there is an error in you RAM (or in your CPU or in your chipset or that there was an unusually high cosmic ray secondary burst in your vicinity while you were running the test...)
Or, with one board that I have, that the memory is being clocked at a higher rate than its specification despite being detected at a lower rate. In my case, I have some 667MHz DDR2 that the motherboard chipset detected as 667MHz, and then clocked at 800MHz. The original 1GB stick that was there from the start, and also supposed to be 667MHz, was just fine even though it was clocked at 800MHz. The second stick, which was from the same manufacturer and same 667MHz clock speed, failed both with and without the first one being present. It wasn't until I took notice of the POST screen, which was surprisingly not hidden behind a splash screen, that I saw the wrong clock speeds and specified it under the BIOS. After that, 8 hours of running Memtest86+ showed no errors. Regards, David Bolt -- Team Acorn: http://www.distributed.net/ OGR-P2 @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~15Mkeys SUSE 10.1 32bit | openSUSE 10.2 32bit | openSUSE 10.3 32bit | openSUSE 11.0a1 SUSE 10.1 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 64bit | openSUSE 10.3 64bit RISC OS 3.6 | TOS 4.02 | openSUSE 10.3 PPC | RISC OS 3.11 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Sunday 20 April 2008 00:09, Russ Fineman wrote:
Does any one no how dependable the memory diagnostic is that comes on the opensues 10.3 dvd is/ My production environment crashed yesterday after some updates. After muck looking and reinstalling 10.3 I ram the memory diagnostics. It is reporting errors and before I go and by new memory I wanted to ask about its reliability.
There are two ways to ask / answer this:
1) If Memtest86+ reports no errors, is the RAM error-free?
2) If Memtest86+ reports errors, does the RAM have errors?
Question (1) cannot be definitively answered in the affirmative.
Question (2) can!
In other words, if Memtest86+ reports no errors when testing your RAM, you cannot definitively conclude there are no errors in your RAM, only that Memtest86+ did not detect any erroneous behavior during its tests.
On the other hand, if Memtest86+ reports an error, you can be quite certain that there is an error in you RAM (or in your CPU or in your chipset or that there was an unusually high cosmic ray secondary burst in your vicinity while you were running the test...)
Welcome to the "real world." (Not the MTV series...)
Also, remove the RAM and run MEMTEST again, to see if the problem goes away. If it does, the new memory is likely defective or not compatible. However, it may still be an issue with the mom board. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 09:19 -0400, James Knott wrote:
Also, remove the RAM and run MEMTEST again, to see if the problem goes away. If it does, the new memory is likely defective or not compatible. However, it may still be an issue with the mom board.
Not nescecarily. Don't jump to conclusions Could also be the northbridge towards the mem, or a PSU operating at it's limits If you get mem-errors, remove the mem-modules, re-run the test for at leas several days. If they're gone, take another pc that you know for certain that it does not have any problems. Insert in this system the suspected ram-modules. Run the mem-test also on this system. Only if it start failing on this system also, one might conclude that the mem is bad. be sure, that you're not overclocking, As Illustration: I've had a system with 4GB that went crazy after four years. Only errors in the top 100 MB, Re-adjust the kernel that it only used 3.5GB mem, All went well for six months, then problems again, re-adjust to 3GB, another couple of months. Finally when hitting the 1GB limit bought some new mem. Mem errors straight away. Probably a fried northbridge. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Sunday 20 April 2008 00:09, Russ Fineman wrote:
Does any one no how dependable the memory diagnostic is that comes on the opensues 10.3 dvd is/ My production environment crashed yesterday after some updates. After muck looking and reinstalling 10.3 I ram the memory diagnostics. It is reporting errors and before I go and by new memory I wanted to ask about its reliability.
There are two ways to ask / answer this:
1) If Memtest86+ reports no errors, is the RAM error-free?
2) If Memtest86+ reports errors, does the RAM have errors?
Question (1) cannot be definitively answered in the affirmative.
Question (2) can!
In other words, if Memtest86+ reports no errors when testing your RAM, you cannot definitively conclude there are no errors in your RAM, only that Memtest86+ did not detect any erroneous behavior during its tests.
On the other hand, if Memtest86+ reports an error, you can be quite certain that there is an error in you RAM (or in your CPU or in your chipset or that there was an unusually high cosmic ray secondary burst in your vicinity while you were running the test...)
Welcome to the "real world." (Not the MTV series...)
Thanks for any help. -- Russ
Randall Schulz
Hope this gets thru as I do not see my own posts on the Alt news group. I think I may have found the a bad card. I am down to two GB and if I enter run level three I do not appear to hang up my mouse and keyboard. This is with the 3rd GB card removed. Still need to test if grub boot to runlevel 5 works with hang up. At present with 2 GB Memtest86 is no longer reporting errors. Thanks for all the responses. -- Russ Registered Linux user #441463 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 2:54 PM, russbucket
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Sunday 20 April 2008 00:09, Russ Fineman wrote:
Does any one no how dependable the memory diagnostic is that comes on the opensues 10.3 dvd is/ My production environment crashed yesterday after some updates. After muck looking and reinstalling 10.3 I ram the memory diagnostics. It is reporting errors and before I go and by new memory I wanted to ask about its reliability.
There are two ways to ask / answer this:
1) If Memtest86+ reports no errors, is the RAM error-free?
2) If Memtest86+ reports errors, does the RAM have errors?
Question (1) cannot be definitively answered in the affirmative.
Question (2) can!
In other words, if Memtest86+ reports no errors when testing your RAM, you cannot definitively conclude there are no errors in your RAM, only that Memtest86+ did not detect any erroneous behavior during its tests.
On the other hand, if Memtest86+ reports an error, you can be quite certain that there is an error in you RAM (or in your CPU or in your chipset or that there was an unusually high cosmic ray secondary burst in your vicinity while you were running the test...)
Welcome to the "real world." (Not the MTV series...)
Thanks for any help. -- Russ
Randall Schulz
Hope this gets thru as I do not see my own posts on the Alt news group. I think I may have found the a bad card. I am down to two GB and if I enter run level three I do not appear to hang up my mouse and keyboard. This is with the 3rd GB card removed.
Still need to test if grub boot to runlevel 5 works with hang up. At present with 2 GB Memtest86 is no longer reporting errors.
Thanks for all the responses. -- Russ Registered Linux user #441463
Russ, With Asus MBs, we've had to up the voltage to the ram slightly when going from 2 sticks to 4 sticks. Don't know if this happens with other brand MBs or not. So test your ram with just 2 sticks at a time. If all is good, but with all 4 installed you have problems, then you can try raising your ram voltage slightly to see if it helps. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 2:54 PM, russbucket
wrote: Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Sunday 20 April 2008 00:09, Russ Fineman wrote:
Does any one no how dependable the memory diagnostic is that comes on the opensues 10.3 dvd is/ My production environment crashed yesterday after some updates. After muck looking and reinstalling 10.3 I ram the memory diagnostics. It is reporting errors and before I go and by new memory I wanted to ask about its reliability.
There are two ways to ask / answer this:
1) If Memtest86+ reports no errors, is the RAM error-free?
2) If Memtest86+ reports errors, does the RAM have errors?
Question (1) cannot be definitively answered in the affirmative.
Question (2) can!
In other words, if Memtest86+ reports no errors when testing your RAM, you cannot definitively conclude there are no errors in your RAM, only that Memtest86+ did not detect any erroneous behavior during its tests.
On the other hand, if Memtest86+ reports an error, you can be quite certain that there is an error in you RAM (or in your CPU or in your chipset or that there was an unusually high cosmic ray secondary burst in your vicinity while you were running the test...)
Welcome to the "real world." (Not the MTV series...)
Thanks for any help. -- Russ
Randall Schulz
Hope this gets thru as I do not see my own posts on the Alt news group. I think I may have found the a bad card. I am down to two GB and if I enter run level three I do not appear to hang up my mouse and keyboard. This is with the 3rd GB card removed.
Still need to test if grub boot to runlevel 5 works with hang up. At present with 2 GB Memtest86 is no longer reporting errors.
Thanks for all the responses. -- Russ Registered Linux user #441463
Russ,
With Asus MBs, we've had to up the voltage to the ram slightly when going from 2 sticks to 4 sticks. Don't know if this happens with other brand MBs or not.
So test your ram with just 2 sticks at a time. If all is good, but with all 4 installed you have problems, then you can try raising your ram voltage slightly to see if it helps.
Greg Thanks Greg. What I had was 3 sticks. Took out the third stick yesterday and ran diagnostics all night, no errors, plugged in third stick again and errors came back on first complete pass. they occur in test 5. One bit on
Greg Freemyer wrote: that should not be. Removed third stick and errors gone. My other system is an old PIII and does not use ddr ram like this one. If I boot into safe mode, everything works with 2 sticks, when I try booting regular my boot hangs as KDE comes up at the display indicator. If I go into safemode and then boot into init 5 everything works. I do not think this is related to the memory as such. Something is addressed wrong I thing or was corrupted when I reinstalled as the bad memory board was in the system at that time. I may order new memory if I cannot find some locally. Live in small town with one Computer store and a Staples. Thanks for your help so far and also everyone else who responded. -- Russ Registered Linux user #441463 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (7)
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David Bolt
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Greg Freemyer
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Hans Witvliet
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James Knott
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Randall R Schulz
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Russ Fineman
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russbucket