Anyine advise on PC problem (seems to fail MemTest) ?

[Jethro]

Hi guys,

I inherited an old 3 Ghz P4 mother board from my brother. It takes
2xDDR (168 pin) memory modules. I''ve fitted a new HDD and power
supply, and it boots up fine.

I've got no OS installed yet, but it happily boots an Ubuntu LiveCD.
I've been able to run the version of Ubuntu on it too, quite happily.
I left it on the Ubuntu desktop for 18 hours (overnight) as a sort of
basic soak test, and it seemed OK too.

Out of curiousity, I thought I'd run Memtest. It went for about 10
minutes, was into test 5, and all of a sudden the PC went into some
sort of boot-cycle ... whirr-click, the keyboard lights flash 3
times ... beep, and then starts again.

I removed the memory, blew out the contacts and tried again. Same
thing, but into test 4.

Sorry to be so vague, but I'm posting from work. When I get home I can
get the mobo make and model.

In the meantime, can anyone suggest any more quick tests I can try ?
Or software which might give a better idea ? Or does anyone know what
the symptoms are suggestive of ?

Thanks in advance.

J

 

[Mike Walsh]

Memtest should run on any PC without those symptoms. The problem is probably unrelated to memtest. Maybe a bad power supply or motherboard.

 

[Daniel]

I had a similar problem, the PC ran fine but Memtest and Memscope showed
errors, it turned out it was the RAM sticks, they were not 100% compatible
with the Motherboard and the Technician had to change a setting, latency or
voltage I think.

Have a talk to local repair place, IF you know a good one.

regards

Daniel

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

I inherited an old 3 Ghz P4 mother board from my brother. It takes
2xDDR (168 pin) memory modules. I''ve fitted a new HDD and power
supply, and it boots up fine.

I've got no OS installed yet, but it happily boots an Ubuntu LiveCD.
I've been able to run the version of Ubuntu on it too, quite happily.
I left it on the Ubuntu desktop for 18 hours (overnight) as a sort of
basic soak test, and it seemed OK too.

Out of curiousity, I thought I'd run Memtest. It went for about 10
minutes, was into test 5, and all of a sudden the PC went into some
sort of boot-cycle ... whirr-click, the keyboard lights flash 3
times ... beep, and then starts again.

I removed the memory, blew out the contacts and tried again. Same
thing, but into test 4.

In the meantime, can anyone suggest any more quick tests I can try ?
Or software which might give a better idea ? Or does anyone know what
the symptoms are suggestive of ?

By "Memtest" I hope you mean either MemTest+ or MemTest86 because
there's a program called MemTest that's not nearly as good as them.

Gold Memory, www.goldmemory.cz, is a great test, but try to get an
older version, 5.07, because the current version consistently passed
some bad memory I tried a few months ago.
Gold Memory got a really good review from RealWorldTech.com; as did
MemTest86. I wouldn't trust any memory unless it passed both GM 5.07
AND MemTest86 3.x overnight.

The memory may pass every diagnostic if you specify slower timing
settings in the BIOS setup, including a slower memory bus speed. I've
seen lots of modules fail badly at 133 MHz but run perfectly at 100
MHz.

 

[Jethro]

Hi guys,

I inherited an old 3 Ghz P4 mother board from my brother. It takes
2xDDR (168 pin) memory modules. I''ve fitted a new HDD and power
supply, and it boots up fine.

I've got no OS installed yet, but it happily boots an Ubuntu LiveCD.
I've been able to run the version of Ubuntu on it too, quite happily.
I left it on the Ubuntu desktop for 18 hours (overnight) as a sort of
basic soak test, and it seemed OK too.

Out of curiousity, I thought I'd run Memtest. It went for about 10
minutes, was into test 5, and all of a sudden the PC went into some
sort of boot-cycle ... whirr-click, the keyboard lights flash 3
times ... beep, and then starts again.

I removed the memory, blew out the contacts and tried again. Same
thing, but into test 4.

Sorry to be so vague, but I'm posting from work. When I get home I can
get the mobo make and model.

In the meantime, can anyone suggest any more quick tests I can try ?
Or software which might give a better idea ? Or does anyone know what
the symptoms are suggestive of ?

Hi guys,

after an evening of ***ing about, I think I nailed it. I had 2
seemingly identical 512Mb DIMMs. After crashing in memtest (yes, it
was memtest86 - comes with the Ubuntu Live CD), I pulled one out, ran
Memtest fine, and installed Linux. Before that, the install caused the
m/c to act as if the power button had been pressed.

The BIOS settings (Award) on this machine are strangely vanilla - no
way to adjust memory timings ...
Bit of a bummer, as I was looking forward to running with 1Gb of RAM.

Oh well, things seem to be OK now ... I'm posting from the machine in
question. Thank you for all your comments....