Question about memtest

[thestrangebrew]

So I OC'ed my i5 750 to just under 3.6ghz and it ran stable for 8.5 hrs on prime. I decided to run memtest, but I think I'm running the wrong test. I had to open it 4 times as when I ran it the 1st time it said it could only test 1092mb (I have 4gb g-skill ripjaw 1600). Anyways, when I OCed my cpu, I changed the dram setting to 1700 and that's what's being tested right now. I'm at work and won't be able to check on it till tonight, and I'm a little concerned about leaving the test on while I'm away. If memtest finds an error (assuming the RAM is being tested right now) will it stop the test so that my ram doesn't get damaged or overheated? This is the first time I've tried running memtest obviously lol.

 

[Blckhaze]

Don't worry about it. I think it pauses when it finds an error.. not entirely sure.

But.. I had some bad ram at one time, left memtest on all night. Woke up to like 50 errors even though it started with one error, I just kept clicking ok and it would continue on with error after error popup dialogs. I did this prolly 20 times with the error after error trying to get the ram to work. In the end I just replaced the ram. Now there are 0 errors.

It's safe. That is unless the PC completely freezes without a bluescreen and doesn't reboot itself... That happened during the unstability of my bad ram... But I wasn't running memtest. I just came home one day and it was like that. I force shutdown the PC and everything was still fine.

 

[thestrangebrew]

Well I was able to run home on lunch and check on the pc. It said I had 1 error on all 4 tests I started. Weird because I've never had any issues with it, but I didn't have time to see what the error was. I'll run a different test tonight and see how it does.

 

[Blckhaze]

I would run more testing and see just how often there is an error. One error means bad ram or bad timings. It might not be too serious just yet though if there is only 1 error every so often. Though it only takes one error to cause a problem, the chance of it happening is less. If it is bad ram and not incorrect timings/voltage, then I would recommend replacing the ram as soon as possible. Things will get worse overall if the ram isn't fixed over time, time pending on the amount of errors processed.

 

[thestrangebrew]

I didn't have time to run any tests last night. In what I've been reading so far, I need to burn memtest as an .iso and boot from it so it'll test all 4gb? I've never burned an .iso before.

 

[Blckhaze]

Using memtest on the desktop will eventually cycle through all the ram according to their support...

As far as memtest86,
http://www.memtest86.com/download.html
download the correct format, probably windows 7?, extract, "open with" windows disk image burner" and create a disk image. Then just reboot the PC starting with the cd/dvd rom and you can go from there.

 

[thestrangebrew]

Best answer selected by thestrangebrew.