duh, I'm new to memtest86...

[ragejg]

That's right, folks, I don't know crap about this little proggie...

I made the floppy, booted with it and it kicked in... This is ver 3.0 I'm talkin about... Now, the system I'm testing the ram on is a kt133a with one stick o 256 in it...

How long does the test take?

It's running default tests, currently, and has been goin for 0:50 ...

What tests does bad ram usually fail @?

Any memtest86 words of wisdom for me? :)

[The Baron]

It takes a long long time...

[ragejg]

meh... :(

[Smokey]

I cant remember, I think it took about an hour on my setup, but I let it run overnight. Out of running the full set of tests once, doesnt mean it will fail, run it overnight to be 100% sure.

[Riptide]

Another great utility to test your stability with is Prime 95. I had memory compatibility problems with my motherboard and OCZ which showed up regularly in prime w/blue screens. Got the mushkin and the machine was rock stable...

[ALobpreis]

The basic test takes aproximately 30 minutes for 128 Mb on a 800 MHz CPU, to give you an idea. But it depends also on RAM speed.

Anyway, remember it's a burn-in test, so it's done over and over. You'll see on the right how many passes have been done.
Usually, with one pass it's enough. If the problem is very random, you should let it run overnight, and / or choose the thorough test (several hours).
You can see estimative times in the readme file in the installer program.

All good RAM testers MUST run in DOS or have a self boot, like this one. Otherwise, running in Windows, there's a lot of RAM already in use that can't be tested. :(

[lunix]

There are no tests in particular that will fail. Its a great program as it works well and is so easy. Boot up and leave it alone. When your ram fails it will print a error in the columns.
I have seen a stick of ram so bad that it just spewed continuous errors so fast it was scary. My friend had managed to install, update and configure his machine with this stick in it!
Sometimes the ram might not be bad but you might have your timings slightly too high. I have seen this on my machine where it would catch and error only on the 2 or 3 time through. Relaxing the timings made it go away.