tests for bad hardware

[Kenn Cook]

Barry wrote:
> I have an intermittant problem with a laptop running Ubuntu 6.06. It's
> got a Core duo processor,  2 gigs of ram, a sata drive, an Intel board
> and an nvidia graphics card, and want to know if there are any tools
> that can scope out bad hardware. I know of memtest86, and the results
> are below.
>
> Every time I've run a program that is memory intensive, the machine
> crashes. It just stops, as if someone pulled the plug. Nothing is
> written in the logs to indicate what the problem is. This has happened
> about six times. In between these failures, the machine runs fine --
> i.e. when I use it as a lightweight desktop for Firefox, T-bird,
> rhythmbox, gnome-terminals, and occassionally OpenOffice and Gimp.
> It's generally up 24 hours a day (without the battery in), and shows
> no sign of trouble until I do something more demanding.
>
> One day, I did an extensive test with memtest86. The ram is in two
> modules so I was able to test one, then the other and both. With both
> modules in, the machine crashes early in the first iteration -- just
> like the other crashes: pffft and the machine is dead. There is no
> report of problems before this happens. I have to restart to get the
> DVD out. With either module in, memtest will do one or two iterations
> successfully, but it crashes with each one after a few loops of the
> default test set. I suppose memtest is exposing some other hardware.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> TIA
>
>   
    have you done a memory upgrade from the original configuration?  If 
so, is it possible that the wrong memory for the that particular system 
was installed?  i.e. wrong clock speed etc.