Memory Tests

I have been having issues of the Windows registry becoming corrupt with a friends system. I had isolated it down to all of the various components and then decided it’s either the motherboard or memory.

Well with the help of the "Memtest86" I isolated it down to memory errors that showed themselves right away.

I had already turned down the memory voltage from 3.4v to 3.3v suspecting that but still kept corrupting the registry.

Now I did not have another set of pc133 memory to test if it was the memory stick or the memory settings. I actually had to go and purchase another stick of pc133 memory to test if the memory module or the settings were the issue.

Well I ran the same "Memtest86” test with the new memory stick and presto memory issues show right away!

Well this is now obviously memory settings. I built this system a few years ago and it was hard jumpered. I'm thinking that maybe someone else poked their heads in there and replaced the memory or adjusted something.

Well I took the jumpered settings off and set the motherboard (ASUS a7v133-c) up for jumperless settings and set the memory and CPU in the bios. I then ran the “Memtest86 for several passes and it found no errors. I then reloaded the OS and some other software on the system without issue.

I then set the “Memtest86" to run and test the memory overnight. This morning I looked and after several hours of running test there are no more memory errors

I am now running a memory test I downloaded from Microsoft's site to see if it finds any errors and so far after 8 passes no issues!

Both memory tests run off of bootable CDROM or floppy without taking you into the OS of course.

Here are the URL's to the memory tests:

http://www.memtest.org/

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp