If Bad Ram Is A Prob? How Long Will Memtest Take To Find Out?

DumNDuMMerDumNDuMMer New
edited March 2006 in Hardware
I am posting this because my computer has been running slow & sluggish lately. It was at about 65% complete when I lost patience and hit the Escape button. It took aproximately 3h 30m for it to get to the 65%. I don't know if it's because memtest usually takes this long or because of my slow pc. It starts slowly at times, then other times it doesn't. When it starts normally, everything seems ok untill it slows down to a crawl seconds-to-minutes after start up. I can't do a simple thing such as listen to music on Winamp, open Internet Explorer (to try and post this thread) or do anything without having Windows freeze on me. Only thing I know I have done inside the machine is remove the ram sticks when I was cleaning for dust, after that is when the PC started to slow down to a crawl. I think I ended up damaging something, the ram most likely for it to slow down so bad but I'm not sure.

I have a some what of an old pc:
Compaq Presario 5321SR
Windows XP SP2
Pentium 4 1.5GHz
384MB
If memtest is supposed to take that long... I would appreciate if someone let me know, if not I would like to try another aproach to my problem. (I'm lucky right now this thing hasn't frozen up on me). Any help is appreciated like always.
It's slow for a few seconds (maybe a few minutes) then back to normal speed, then slow, then normal:banghead:

Comments

  • madmatmadmat
    edited February 2006
    Memtest normally takes 15 minutes to an hour to complete a pass depending upon the speed of your memory.

    Naturally, the slower the ram in your PC the longer the tests will take especially if you've got a large amount of ram to test but 384Mb of DDR should be maybe pushing about 1300Mb/s on your particular system.

    Let memtest86+ run all night, just turn off the monitor and watch TV, go to bed or whatever you do overnight and turn the power on for the monitor in the morning and look for errors. If there are none then your problem could be with another piece of hardware such as the motherboard or CPU although those generally just fail catastrophically.
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited February 2006
    Memtest runs in test stages. Some tests take MUCH longer than others because of what the test is supposed to address. A fairly short write-up about Memtests' various tests can be found Here.

    As already mentioned- amount of memory and system bus speed will correspondingly change the total time of the entire pass test suite- even up to a couple of hours per pass.

    You can see which test stage is being run during a pass on the screen. If you are seeing no errors being reported after a couple of passes, your problem is likely not in your memory. If you are, however, seeing timing changes in the middle of a test stage, that would suggest something else like a problem in another component or the system board.

    You're right- your system is pretty old and it is not all that uncommon to have a dying system board battery. Symptoms of that, though, are usually non-default system settings being lost. This may include backing off the system bus speed to its lowest setting.
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited February 2006
    As a follow-on, I did a little more research on this.

    Look to see if your System Date and Time are correct. Correct it if it is not. If it goes totally retro after a power cycle or two, you need to replace your system board battery. But your job is not done. You must also restore your BIOS settings. Dig up your system User's Guide to help.

    However, I also have these nagging suspicions on my shoulder and urge you to check them out:

    1. Launch Windows Update and press the Custom button. In the left column, see if there is a number in the Hardware, Optional () field under Select by Type. If there is, install them (and any possible High Priority ones as well, of course)- these are sometimes important "not so optional" updates and do NOT show-up in Auto-Update or notify. You may also want to see if you are current with your BIOS and firmware at Compaq (now HP, BTW)-

    Here is a helpful URL

    2. IF that doesn't help, you might also want to check out the

    Spyware/Virus/Trojan (SVT) Forum

    and be sure to do

    The steps before posting

    You may have a nasty critter visiting you.

    Hope this helps! :thumbsup:
  • DumNDuMMerDumNDuMMer New
    edited February 2006
    No BIOS update at the HP site, and now I'm sure it's not no virus/adware or such thing because I had called Customer Support and I don't know why but they told me to do a factory restore "I'm sure what you have will be fixed once you restore your pc". That didn't fix nothing, fortunately I have my important files backed up onto this other HD and now I still have the same problem. A slow PC. Still slows down to a crawl. Starts like normal sometimes then it slows down to a crawl, I wait a few minutes, then it's fine and the same routine over and over.
    And I almost forgot, I was able to run memtest once, took about 5h30m until it started over which then I just exited the application. No errors or anything there.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited February 2006
    Run the diagnostic test from the hard drive manufacturer. If the drive is beginning to fail it could cause your problem.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2006
    The only other thing I can think of is to defrag the HDs, and possibly put the page file on your second HD ALSO--as in put page files on both HDs.
  • rykoryko new york
    edited February 2006
    first try a registry cleaner/temp file cleaner, etc...

    might be time for the dreaded full windows xp re-install...
  • DumNDuMMerDumNDuMMer New
    edited March 2006
    I would have tried to defrag the HD's but I already have performed a factory restore with the disc and the PC still runs slow. I have most of my stuff in my 300gb HD that I bought so I was able to save the files. And to think my hard drive is starting to fail... I don't think it is, since I already had it replaced once by a tech sent from customer support. Who knows though, this thing is starting to be frustrating.
  • madmatmadmat
    edited March 2006
    I'm pretty well convinced that you've got problems elsewhere. It might be time to look into a replacement. If you can't afford to replace it then start scouring eBay for a motherboard like the one in your PC and a new CPU. Since the CPU in that series (Willamette) is going to be laughably cheap you might as well look for the biggest one that will fit in your motherboard and do a (slight) upgrade while you're at it.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2006
    This sounds like a dying harddrive problem...

    a lot of these symptoms make me beilive so.

    im in a hurry right now, i will be back later to explain more...
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited March 2006
    okay.. im back.. sorry..

    anyway..

    Computer just randomly slowing down then speeding up? Sound like Harddrive problems to me.

    the only way you can truely know is if you download harddrive diagnostic tools for your harddrive, i dont know what your harddrive manufacturere could be, but most likely there are tools to check for issues.

    OR

    If you have a DVD burner you could just burn all the stuff you want to back up on DVDs then take out the main harddrive, set the jumpers on your 300gb harddrive to master, and then use the system restore disk to install the OS on that harddrive, if it is STILL slowing down then Madmat was right, its CPU/Motherboard issues, but i dont think it is...

    another thing you could probably do if you dont have a DVD burner is Partition your 300gb harddrive into 2 partitions, using a program like partition magic, then put all the files you want to save on one of the paritions, then re-install everything on the other, although i dont know how that would work with your restore disk cause im not familiar with compaqs restore disks.

    also, you might want to check the harddrive for errors using chkdsk or some similar utility
  • DumNDuMMerDumNDuMMer New
    edited March 2006
    I called customer support a few times, they had me to a factory restore on my machine, didn't fix a thing, I called again and they gave me the HP number. They had me order these 3 Quick Restore discs for my machine (which I don't think I need), so I have to wait until they get here. They told me the Quick Recover disc only deletes everything to reinstall everything from the files in the HD. They said the 3 Quick Restore discs would wipe the HD clean and would start over with a fresh install. I'm starting to doubt myself that it's a hard drive or that I have a virus (the reason which they had me order these discs), I'm starting think my problem is elsewhere. I forgot to mention one thing, every time I turn my machine on, it starts off loud with the fans spinning and the whole thing making a loud noise. It usually starts off quiet, but then after a few minutes, the noise starts... and you can hear the fans and everything else inside.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited March 2006
    You know, to me it sounds like you might be having a heat related problem. The P4 processor is designed to "throttle" or slow down by itself when the internal temperature gets to a certain point. Tom's Hardware actually did a test with a running P4 machine where they pulled the heatsink completely off the processor while it was running and it didn't cook the proc and kept running, albeit slowly, because of throttling. And you say that you have a lot of fan noise, well that could be the fan that is pulling air across the heatsink (or mounted on top the heatsink) trying to seize up and you aren't getting decent airflow across your heatsink. Have you tried opening the box up and cleaning all the dust bunnies out lately? BTW, You can order a replacement fan for the one or ones that are getting noisy from just about any online vendor. All you need to do is measure the size of the fan needing replacement. Your more common sizes are 60 X 25 mm, 80 x 25 mm, 92 (or 90) x 25 mm and 120 x 25 mm that a big oem like Compaq would use in a case or on a heatsink.
  • DumNDuMMerDumNDuMMer New
    edited March 2006
    muddocktor wrote:
    You know, to me it sounds like you might be having a heat related problem. The P4 processor is designed to "throttle" or slow down by itself when the internal temperature gets to a certain point. Tom's Hardware actually did a test with a running P4 machine where they pulled the heatsink completely off the processor while it was running and it didn't cook the proc and kept running, albeit slowly, because of throttling. And you say that you have a lot of fan noise, well that could be the fan that is pulling air across the heatsink (or mounted on top the heatsink) trying to seize up and you aren't getting decent airflow across your heatsink. Have you tried opening the box up and cleaning all the dust bunnies out lately? BTW, You can order a replacement fan for the one or ones that are getting noisy from just about any online vendor. All you need to do is measure the size of the fan needing replacement. Your more common sizes are 60 X 25 mm, 80 x 25 mm, 92 (or 90) x 25 mm and 120 x 25 mm that a big oem like Compaq would use in a case or on a heatsink.
    You seem to have been right about the heat problem thing. Today I cleaned out the inside... as much as I could... and so far, the pc hasn't slowed down to a crawl like it would do most of the time. I'll be back though if my problem continues (lol) but eitherway thanks for your help!
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