Memtest Failure Acceptability?

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n64man120

2[H]4U
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Jan 11, 2004
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I've got a low/mid range Home Theater PC that's been experiencing some random freezes lately, quite frequently. The same type of actions (within SageTV my PVR App) were causing the entire system to just lock up. I first turned to the hard drive, since constant read/writes + head + 24/7 = yea... Long story short, I ran SpinRite, found a few errors, couldn't correct them, I moved on with my life. Reformatted and did a clean install one more time to give it a shot, and now I'm getting persistent freezes again, but from a different action. The repeatability makes me lean towards it being a bad portion of the drive. Yada Yada Yada...

Before replacing the drive, I decided to run Memtest on the ram. 768 megs of slow low-end stuff, likely PC2700 or so if I recall, partially Rosewill branded.

In 24 hours, Memtest recorded 350 total errors, hot damn!

Are there acceptable failure rates when running Memtest, especially for lower-bin parts? Trying to gauge if its worth it to swap the drive first, or buy some new sticks.
 
Not really, every error = potential crash/lockup.. Or worse corrupted data written to the hard drive.. It would prolly be your best bet to test each stick individually and then replace the the bad one(s)..
 
Random freezes......Memtest errors......yep! Sounds like the hard drive to me.....:p

Seriously, memory errors can lead to corrupt data being written to the hard drive and over time the OS basically rototills itself into oblivion. I have seen this myself more than once. Random crashes, corrupt drives.....and when Memtest is run, it racks up some errors.

Any Memtest errors are bad; I won't let systems leave my bench if they are getting any Memtest errors after a 24 hour run. GORANKAR has the right idea; try each stick individually and replace the bad one. If you don't get errors one at a time, try the sticks in different slots. I have had cases where some MoBo's just won't run with some brands / models of memory....weird, but I've seen it before.

Now, if you're getting errors with SpinRite that is an issue that has to be dealt with as well. I'd download the manufacturer's diagnostic software for your drive and run their tests.

Good luck......:cool:
 
Not to be thread hijacking here, but I've run into a similar problem - and it turns out only one of my Ballistix Tracers (see sig) are dead. The other passes all tests flawlessly.

In fact, the bad stick failed almost every single test in Memtest86+ ... :(

Here's to hoping Crucial's RMA process is smooth.
 
Multiple components don't fail at around the same time for no reason.

Either the system is in need of some better cooling, or the power supply or mb is feeding stuff the wrong voltages.

And my bet is that it is a cooling issue causing stuff to fail.

But yeah, memtest errors are not acceptable.

BTW, I have only had a power supply go bad in about the last 5 years. And a CD/DVD drive or two.. but those wear out with lots of use.

I make sure my system stays cool.

The only other part I had to RMA was a motherboard... and it was faulty when new.
 
Well I went ahead and bought a stick of PC3200 512 Corsair from the 'egg. I then looked up the specs of my ancient miniATX board and discovered it's rated for PC2100/2400/2700 ram. I've confirmed that it runs fine with Memtest, but I still can't get the system to boot any OS (which is another issue all together), to make myself fully confident the 3200 stick will perform ok.

Generally speaking, should my 3200 stick perform alright, especially if I clock it down to 2700 speeds?
 
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