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RAM CHECK
| Obtaining and
installing Windows Memory Diagnostic You can obtain the Windows Memory Diagnostic utility from Microsoft's Online Crash Analysis Web site. Click the Download link. The file you'll download, mtinst.exe, is only 640 KB, so it will download quickly. After you've downloaded the file, run it. You must accept the license when the wizard begins. You'll then see the Windows Memory Diagnostic Setup screen. Here you have only two options: Create Startup Disk or Save CD Image To Disk. The first choice creates a bootable floppy disk. The second creates an ISO image that you'll need to burn to a CD. For the purposes of this article, we'll just create the boot floppy. Windows Memory Diagnostic will work with all types of RAM, except ECC, on x86-based computers. The computer can have CPUs from Intel (Pentium or Celeron) or AMD (K6, Athlon, or Duron). According to Microsoft, the utility might not report errors on ECC RAM, because ECC automatically detects and corrects the errors. It is also possible that Windows Memory Diagnostic might detect errors ECC RAM cannot correct. Windows Memory Diagnostic will test only the first 4 GB of RAM. If you have more, you're out of luck. Running the diagnostic To start the tests, boot your computer with the disk you created. At this point, you may notice that the utility is a little rough around the edges. Even though Microsoft has called it "Windows" Memory Diagnostic, you'll notice that it resembles a DOS utility more than anything remotely Windows-like. After Windows Memory Diagnostic has loaded, it starts running the first of three test suites, the Standard test suite, without offering you any options. The Standard test suite is the most basic of the three, the other two being progressively more thorough. Unless you pause or exit the test at this stage, the rest of the test passes of this suite will run. To run more thorough tests, you'll have to press [T] while Windows Memory Diagnostic is running. This gives you the option to select the Extended Test suite. You can also select the Basic Test suite (somewhat more thorough than the Standard suite) or create a custom test suite by going to the Advanced Options menu and selecting Change The Test Suite. To get to this menu, first press [P] to pause Windows Memory Diagnostic, then press [M] for menu. You'll notice the following Advanced options can be set:
The Extended tests can run a couple of hours, so you might want to let it run overnight. The tests will continue running until you pause the utility, exit it, or restart the computer. Identifying the culprit For some hardware configurations, Windows Memory Diagnostic can identify which memory module is the culprit. If Windows Memory Diagnostic finds an error in one or more memory modules, you'll see the View Errors By Memory Module option in the menu. This option will show you which specific memory modules are failing and need to be removed or replaced. When interpreting test results, keep the following in mind:
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PC PROBLEMS OR Computer Processors
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