memtest86+ and memtest86 discrepancies

lundi 17 août 2015

Hi All

I have a new i5 machine here that was delivered with no OS installed.

Prior to installing the OS I booted the machine from a Mint Linux 17.2 x64 DVD and ran memtest86+ v4.20. Saw multiple errors almost immediately. The errors start at 0x0ccb15000 about 3275MB into the single 8GB DDR3 DIMM.

I burnt the latest memtest86+ v5.01 to a CD and ran that. Although the addresses and number of errors were slightly different the result was the broadly the same.

I also noticed that in memtest86+ v4.20 that no errors were detected if I used the restart option from the configuration menu i.e. without rebooting the machine.

None of this made any sense so I looked for another tool and found memtest86 v6.10. I downloaded the free version and put it on a USB stick.

I have now run it three times; once with a single core active, and twice with all 4 cores. No errors.

So I looked for differences between memtest86 and memtest86+. A major difference is that memtest86 supports UEFI whereas memtest86+ does not.

The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-H81M-S2V which has a UEFI BIOS. The RAM is a single 8GB stick of Crucial PC3-12800 non ECC unbuffered.

When I booted memtest86+ from the CD it was using SATA i.e. no UEFI prefix in the boot options table.

When I booted memtest86 from the USB stick it was using UEFI i.e. the name of the drive was prefixed with UEFI.

I am inclined to believe the memtest86 results, but I do not understand enough about UEFI to figure out what's going on here.

Are the memtest86+ results invalid because the motherboard uses UEFI, even though I booted the CD in SATA mode?

Logic says there cannot be a problem with the memory because the memtest86 results are all good.

Are there any other tests I need to carry out?

Should I keep the box or RMA it back to the supplier?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Nick
memtest86+ and memtest86 discrepancies

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