Memtest Bootable

[Vannessa Rataj]

Ineed to run memtest86 because my ram is going bad and I want to pinpoint which one it is. I don't know how to change from legacy to UEFI, (which is apparently necessary and I've no idea of the easiest way to do it.) and when I tried following directions to use diskpart I ended up being told "Cannot find OS Partition(s) for disk 0". I know that my OS is on disk "1" but I don't know what to do from here. If It's checking specifically disk "0" Do I need to switch the partition disk labels? Would it be easier to just unplug my storage drive for now? Any help is appreciated.

Normally, this should not be a problem. But usually, it always is. The Memtest86+ website hosts a specially prepped EXE auto-installer file that will format your USB flash drive, copy Memtest86+ binaries to it and make it bootable.

It's packed as a ZIP file and should work with Windows 7. The name of the file you run is Memtest86+ USB Installer.exe but I am having no luck with it today. Simply because I am unable to select my USB flash drive from the drop down menu. The menu is not showing any selectable item.

I tried version 5.01 and 4.20 on Windows 7 and got the same results. Can't select my USB flash drive. The flash drive is a SanDisk 4 GB Cruzer Blade, just unwrapped, brand new. I had it formatted with FAT32 inside Explorer to get rid of the extra software that SanDisk puts on it. I also rebooted Windows to make sure drivers are loaded. I can use the flash drive to copy files back and forth effortlessly, it just won't show up in the Memtest86+ prep tool.

I did try downloading the pre-compiled bootable binary for version 5.01 and tried to prep the USB flash drive with it using Linux Pen Drive. Inside this tool (Universal-USB-Installer-1.9.5.2.exe) I selected "Try Unlisted Linux ISO". I got the same problem here. The USB flash drive is just not showing up.

I've done what was asked of me, and according to the authors website. But it didn't work anyway. So what I have done is I used another Memtest 86 program. The original Memtest86 line, now up in version 5 (new free software license), and owned by PassMark. It was a breeze using it and making the UFD bootable. It's as simple as ABC.

This is admittedly a somewhat roundabout way, but it does let you run Memtest86+ from a USB! The way I ended up doing it was grabbing a Fedora Workstation ISO from and putting that onto the USB. Now, you might be wondering what Fedora has to do with this, but on their installer image Memtest86+ is available to be booted.

(it's for a UEFI boot PC running normally Windows, its owner does not want to install Ubuntu. "memtest86+" is completely free (unlike "memtest86"), but is quite old, and does not offer a UEFI boot - this is why having it within the Ubuntu options makes things easier)

Memtest86+ version 6 (and newer) can be downloaded as a standalone zip file, which contains an iso file. This iso file can be cloned directly into a USB drive to make a bootable memtest86+ system and it works both in UEFI mode and the old BIOS mode alias legacy mode.

There is another version, the 'original' but now not FOSS version memtest86, and it works in UEFI mode. There is a commercial version and a free version (no cost, but not open source code).

Use PCMemTest. Since Ubuntu 22.04 the PCMemTest is available from the Ubuntu repository. PCMemTest is a fork of MemTest86+ and it works fine on UEFI too. As it is part of Ubuntu it is the easiest to install:

Diagnosing RAM with tools most of the time does not work. I ran Memtest86 for 5/6 hours. It reported that the RAMs do not have any issues. Then I took out the RAMs i doubted and the system started running smoothly.

Just keep one RAM and remove others. Then run your machine for a while and check if there is any issue or not (remember, the issues can be very subtle, for example keyboard does not work for 1-5 seconds every once in a while). If there is no issue then it is a good RAM. Then check ram 2,3...n.

Please note that all RAMs and slots can be good but if there is a miss match (bus speed or brand or the ram) then it can cause issues too. So, you have to make sure that combinations also work. For example, use same brand and same bus speed RAMs together and test the machine for a while (remember, the issues can be very subtle). Then attach another brand / bus speed RAM and test for a while. Then maybe enable XMP and test for a while.

According to this discussion it can't run in UEFI mode because it's a 16-bit program.

If available, booting the live USB (or DVD) in Legacy/CSM (AKA "BIOS mode") should bring the memtest86+ option you want to the live menu.

I used a microsft tool to create a bootable Window 10 install USB.The key contains memtest at:"H:\boot\memtest.exe"When I boot off the USB it goes into Windows 10 install - how can I run the memtest.exe?I know there lots of ways to make a bootable memtest USB but I want to know how to use memtest on the existing bootable Windows 10 USB that I have.

So i'm trying to run a memtest, first I tried selecting the memtest boot option in the flash drive setting through unraid, that would just make the system go in to a reboot cycle. It would output the boot select option to the display and try to automatically run the memtest after 5 seconds as it should but then would just reboot straight away. Was able to boot back in to the OS as standard from this boot selection screen.

Then tried creating a memtest bootable usb using the latest memtest download from When I tried to boot from the UEFI option the system would just go straight back in to the bios. Tried the previous version of memtest (from 2013) and it would do the same thing.

I've been having all sorts of issues with my system that I think originate from my cache drive dying and copying the cache files over the the new drive (possible something corrupt in these files). But realistically this shouldn't affect my system's ability to run a memtest if i'm trying to run it direct from a bootable usb drive created using the official memtest boot drive creator, right?

Hey folks, hope this is an easy one. I have an old laptop that likely has some kind of hardware issue. I tried multiple different distros and Zorin is the only one that seems to be working so far. Now that the device is functional for the time being, I wanted to run a RAM test to see if that might have been what caused it to have so many problems on Windows/Alma/Mint/etc. However, I can't seem to get it to boot to the GRUB menu to select the memtest option. I tried editing /etc/default/grub and changing the timeout style option to menu instead of hidden, as well as changing the timeout time to 20 seconds. Both times running update-grub and restarting caused a white screen with an unrecoverable error message. It took several hard restarts before it would actually get back to the OS again. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

So, I think we've made positive progress. Yet another reboot and the grub menu appeared. Memtest wasn't there, so I have to figure out how to access it, but I'll take a small victory. Trying to boot back to the OS caused yet another white screen error, and I had to hard shut down two more times before it would let me log in. Also, the letter S is back, so that's great.

Alright, so this is the driver info. It's using whichever one it came with during installation. I checked if memtest86+ was already installed and it was. I verified that the file existed in the grub directory as well. I ran the chmod command as well, then ran update-grub. Another reboot, another white error screen, another hard shut down, then it got to the grub screen. Still no memtest option, just Zorin, advanced options, and UEFI. I'll try that grub file edit and let you know how it goes.

So I tried making that edit and running update-grub. One thing I noticed, and maybe it'll help troubleshoot, but when I run update-grub, it explicitly says it's adding an entry for the UEFI settings and doesn't mention memtest at all.

So I ended up just creating a boot drive with memtest on it and used that. The test tapped out before the first pass of tests was even done because it hit 10k errors. I guess this explains why other distros constantly failed to install, so it's a small miracle it can even run Zorin.

I'm trying out Foreman's provisioning system and comparing it to Cobbler,

one of the things I've been looking at is providing a Memtest and DBAN

image via PXE boot. However I can't find any documentation about doing this.

I wish to go through an initial stage of memtesting the machine and doing

some sort of burn in before the machine goes live, then during

decomissioning I want to use DBAN to zero the drives since this hardware

can potentially go to other people outside of the organisation.

I'm wanting to DBAN or Memtest a specific host. Generally during a

decommissioning process we're wanting to just select in Foreman that a DBAN

image is to be deployed to a particular machine and to restart that

machine. Same with Memtest that the image will be selected on that host and

on reboot it will automatically memtest.

Then we can just get a tech to go and verify it has no errors manually, I'm

ideally wanting it to report memtest data back but I really don't think

this is possible at all in Memtest or DBAN (at least not the free version).

So the way I would tackle this is to write a PXEinux template in Foreman

(More > Provisioning Templates > New, select PXELinux from the Kind) and

set it up to boot DBAN/Memdisk. Then, create either an Environment or

Hostgroup called DBAN, and associate the template with it. When you then

put a Host into that Env/HG, it;s choice of template should switch from the

OS default to the more specific Env/HG association. You can test this by

use the spoof-view on the Host>Templates tab.

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