Memory tester program

[antonwalker]

I was wondering what a good memory tester program. I am suspicious about my RAM because when I play BF2142 when I try to open the menue or join another game sometimes it will shutoff and say memory.dll or something like that could not be found. Also I was playing Gmod online and will I was downloading the map and all the stuff it said HL2 source engine failure. Could not dump 8 24032890 bytes. Or something like that. I am using vista 64bit and 4gigs of ballastix memory DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 @ DDR2 532 4-4-4-12. I already read about memtest86 but I dont want to have to make a bootable disk and do all that stuff. Is there another good program vista 64bit compatable?


Thank you!

 

[randomizer]

Memtest86 is still your best bet regardless of whether or not you can be bothered with it.

EDIT: If you download the precompiled installable you can get it to make a boot disc for you. You just run rawwrite.exe, type in the binary filename (default memtest.bin) and then the drive where you want to make the bootable floppy (obviously a: unless you swapped them in the BIOS so then it would be b: )

Note that you wont be able to access the floppy in windows after you have made it into a memtest disc, you will need to reformat it to use it for something else. Alternatively, DL the .iso and you can make a bootable CD instead.

 

[antonwalker]

Is there any other program I can use though? I probly sound very lazy.



Also when the shutdown happened on Gmod I was using around 64% of my RAM.

 

[antonwalker]

Ok just now I was playing Gmod and it had an error and said not enough memory, but I was only using 52% of my RAM. So is this an engine error?

 

[amnotanoobie]

Is there any other program I can use though? I probly sound very lazy.



Also when the shutdown happened on Gmod I was using around 64% of my RAM.

There are a lot of other mini programs that you could use, just google Windows Memory Test or something of the sort and I'm sure that you'd get a ton of results. BUT THERE IS ONE VERY BIG PROBLEM WITH A WINDOWS MEMORY TESTER, it doesn't have the capability to test ALL of your memory. The problem is that when windows boots up, there is a part of the memory that is reserved for the OS, and no program that is running on WinXP could reliably access and determine bad memory on the reserved area. Plus you got all the background processes and services that eat up other memory that also couldn't be tested.

Memtest 86 is one of the best memory testing utilities, plus it's actually easier to test DIMM's one at a time without the additional time of booting onto and shutting down Windows. It may be a bitter pill for you to take, but it's necessary, just create the bootdisk so that you could already RMA your bad RAM by later or tomorrow.

Also about Gmod crashing on around 64%, it is a strong indication that a program writes onto a bad section of RAM and it couldn't retrieve the data, so the OS does what it could only do. Panic and Crash! LOL


*sorry for the all caps, just made sure you noticed

 

[antonwalker]

Ok when I was trying to boot off the CD I forgot my USB keyboard doesn't power on until windows starts loading so I ran to get my other keyboard, but by the time I got back it was past my splash screen so I decideed to push the del key to see if it would go to my bios setup so I could boot off CD, instead it went to a screen that said boot from windows c drive or advanced which said windows memory diagnostic. So I tested it and I got no errors. Is this as good as memtest86?? It was in bios and everything. So if windows is right then that means it must be an engine error or something like that??

 

[antonwalker]

Crap, I was playing HL:S and it went all pause hear sound over and over agan. And my moniter started showing that there was no signal. So maybe its my graphix card??