how do I read memtest?

Velocity

I made a bootable cd of memtest86 v1.7, popped it in and it ran for 2 hours, but I dont have a clue what i'm looking for, or what procedure is best.
I have 4 sticks of 512 ram. In two hours all I seen is 1 pass and 1,700,000+ errors. Top of screen is blue, bottom scrolling area is red.
Do I test with all my ram, or one stick at a time? I looked some sort of sticky for noobs, but i'm a noob so i didnt find one

Thrax

You definitely have bad RAM. The red area indicates all the errors.

At this point, test each stick individually, and in each memory slot. So if you have 4 slots and two sticks, you'll need to test 8 times. Stick 1, slot a/b/c/d -> stick 2, slot a/b/c/d.

And then you'll know if you have good sticks and/or bad slots.

Velocity

ah I just did all 4 sticks in slot one before getting your msg.
stick #1- no errors
stick #2- 35 errors in tests 5,6,7,8 combined
stick #3- 80 errors in tests 3 and 6
stick #4- 70,000+ errors in first two tests, I yanked it, why go on.

Thrax

Looks like you have 3 faulty sticks of RAM; am I reading that right?

Move stick one to the other slots and see if the slots are bad.

Velocity

Yea, I read it as 3 sticks with errors. Now can I use any of them, or are they fubar reguardless of minimal amounts of errors?
I guess if all four had been bad, it could have been someother hardware issue, am I assuming correctly?

Thrax

Whatever slot stick 1 was in was the only slot that did not report errors; I strongly suggest trying the three "Bad" sticks in that slot before you write all the memory off. It is very abnormal for three sticks to go bad simultaneously.

If they end up bad in that slot, they must be replaced, regardless of the quantity of errors.

Velocity

oh I wasnt clear. I tested all four sticks in slot#1. Havent tested the 3 remaining slots yet.

Velocity

update:
well I tried my only good stick of ram in my other three remaining slots.
I have a Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe board which takes duel memory sticks.
My memtest went fine in the two yellow slots (which are dimm A-1 and B-1, but nothing happened at all on bootup with my ram in the black slots (dimm A-2 and B-2).
Am I wrong in thinking the black slots are not active til there is a stick of ram in their partner slot?
Is it a fair assumption I've narrowed my prob down to 3 bad sticks of ram?

Qeldroma

Yes, I think you have at least 3 sticks of bad RAM. However, as Thrax suggests, your mobo maybe bad too. IF you are OK risking the 4th stick (however, if you bought them in pairs and the warranty is still good, you'll still have to RMA them all anyhow), you could try using it with a bad one in a pair to see if the "errors follow the boards" or if your remaining board goes bad.

Be sure to follow the installation sequence recommended by your mobo manual.

May I ask what make and model number of memory you are using?

Velocity

The board manual isnt very clear on which two slots make a pair.
My slots are yellow, black, yellow, black, in that order.
My memory is DDR2 PC5300 DDR2/667 Dual channel
But I cannot find any brand name anywhere on the sticks or in my puter paperwork.

Qeldroma

Try all four and shuffle the good one. Keep track of what is where and look for changes in each board's behavior.

Is your machine a brand-name like Dell then?

Velocity

How would I watch a particular board if I have them all in? Sorry i'm new to this ram stuff.
I put in the good stick and the bad stick with the least amount of errors and so far everythings been solid.
I think they've always been bad, but one has just gotten worse recently.
Just a curiosity question, why does memtest say my fsb is 200 when my puter is advertised as 800fsb
Puter is almost 2 years old
system specs:
CyberPower Inc.
3.6ghz socket775 intel w/HT technology
MB P5ND2-SLI Deluxe
2gb PC5300 ram
HD Western Digital 74gb 10,000rpm
Geforce4 6800 GT 256mb Vid card
SB Audigy4 card

Thrax

Your motherboard is capable of running one stick at a time.

The channels are yellow/yellow and black/black.

Qeldroma

I see. Check with CyberPower Inc. and their warranty agreement- they may take care of this problem for you. However, they are a budget PC and may not after 2 years.

You can mark your good board and start out with it in another slot besides the one it worked in. Does it fail? Swap it with one in a slot you haven't tried yet. Does it fail there? Get it? Don't bother getting fancy for now. If it does fail in a slot, go back to one you know it works in and see if it works still- if so hang on to it. Be sure to mark the bad slot if you want to work around it.

Let us know ...

EDIT- posted over you, Thrax, sorry. So are you saying he has two bad slots since his blacks failed to work? (Post #8)

Velocity

yea i shot off a email to my tech support, since they dont answer phones on weekends (24/7 haha)
I have my good one and least worse stick side by side in a yellow and black slot.
System shows as having 1gb a ram and its been solid for 2 hours now.

Velocity

all i know is, I would have never gotten this far without you guys. Thanks a bunch!
I been jumpin through hoops with this puter since i got it. I could write a book.

Velocity

This is buggin the bejesus out of me about how this ram got fried. I had bought a program from slysoft about 2 weeks ago called GameJackel, its one of those proggies that lets you play games without the cd inserted in the puter. My probs all started around that time. After buying and installing, it mentioned it does not support duel CPU's and made some sort of changes. Makes me wonder if that caused some physical malfunction that may have damaged my ram. My son and his wife just had our first grandchild and since money was tight for them, I sent him my game cd's, figuring i'll just use this program. Next time i'll just buy him a copy of the dang game.
Same ol story, I walk around lookin like a hobo so the kids can look like a million bucks

Thrax

It's coincidence. Software can causes hardware issues that don't already exist.

Velocity

I gotta get some ram into this puppy soon, cause if "she" cant play solitaire, lifes gonna be rough round here.

Qeldroma

It's a pretty mean game of solitaire that requires 2GB of RAM.

Also, certain pieces of software may finally uncover problems that already exist. That's why Memtest is recommended to be run when you first get your machine together.

Velocity

yea i was just jokin bout the solitaire, puter is workin fine on one stick. Am just growing old waiting for a reply from my tech support about the ram.
Puter is just over 1 1/2 years old, and my warranty is supposedly 3 years.
Last summer (1st week of june) my Thermaltake 680 watt power supply went out after only 8 months. I didnt have my system up and running until 1st week of september.
Tech support had me install 3 mobo's, then I insisted on trying a power supply, after they finally sent the right replacement power supply(2 times), my windows was corrupted, couldnt do a fresh install of XP cause after I deleted C partition and made a new partition, I got a black screen saying "NTLDR is missing". They said windows was having trouble recognizing the new board they had me install and I had to ship my puter back to them. By the time I was up and running, it was september.
Then recently this new prob with the ram started. Which I initially thought I just needed a reformat. Low and behold after deleting my C partiton, i got that same NTLDR missing error with a black screen. This tech support said try any other cd of XP you may have. So I grabbed my kids XP cd and windows loaded without a hitch. Therefore i went a whole extra month last year without a puter just cause I was never supplied with a good cd copy of XP.