tests for bad hardware

[Barry]

On 9/17/07, Kenn Cook <kcook at vanguardtrailer.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

No. The two gigs was vendor-insalled at purchase time. btw, this is a
System76 machine, and the two memory modules had the same labeling --
Corsair Value Select.