On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 02:12:27AM +0200, phoenix wrote: > > I apologise if this is off the topic somewhat, but I figured I could > get some helpful answers here. > > I have purchased a new computer and will be getting it delivered on > monday. > > I was told by a friend to run memtest 86 to see if the 1 gig of 400mhz > dual channel DDR I purchased is good and up to speed. > I wanted to know two things. First, how do I do this? And second, what
Search google for 'memtest86'. You should easily find, download, put it on a floppy and boot from it. I would personally not trust it too much when talking about speed - it is not a speed tester. I would trust it if it would say you have memory errors (and I also got worse messages from it with bad motherboards). I recommend to run it at least for a few hours, better a few days (if you suspect problems) - I had machines that started reporting errors only after a few hours. > other tests should I run on my system in order to verify that it is up > to par with what I ordered? I don't want to get conned. What should I > check, what should I look at to make sure I got what I paid for? Generally, you can't be totally sure. You should start by comparing accurately the list of parts you ordered with what you actually got. Unless you suspect fakes, you should only check model numbers, not actual performance. You could have checked what the performance should be on the manufacturer's site before the parchase. Now you can of course check the performance, but you would have no case if it's lower then expected - unless you specifically ordered specific performance. You should then first try each part separately. memtest86 is good for testing the memory (and to some extent, the cpu and board), and there are such other programs for checking other things. You can also try something like 'naturally' (google for it) - it's a CD you boot from and stress test your hardware. Note I did not use it myself, only read about it. > > (I should note I'm not a computer wiz, so I don't know that much. I > will be at the linux insta-party getting linux put on this machine but > until then I am stuck with windows XP. So any tests that can't be run > under windows will have to wait till then. What can / should I do?) > > Thanks in advance for helping me! Good luck with your new machine, -- Didi ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
