Memtest 7.1 freezes immediately upon beginning testing

[TwistedKestrel]

Will try to keep it short and sweet.

Using MemTest 7.1 on my Dell Latitude E6420 results in it freezing during the very first test (Test 0). Windows Memory Diagnostic does exactly the same thing. However, booting MemTest 4 off of the same USB image works fine and it starts trucking away (did not reveal any anomalies, but I didn't leave it running very long either). I'm interested in what the crashing of the test could mean - is the BIOS doing something funny with memory addressing?

Including a photo of the frozen test: http://imgur.com/a/tZTHx

And also the MemTest log: http://pastebin.com/kkCH05qC

[David (PassMark)]

Was the machine stable when running Windows? (I assume not).
Did you do something to the machine that might have provoked this. e.g. RAM upgrade, change in BIOS settings, BIOS upgrade, turning something on that wasn't previously on (e.g. WiFi)?

Considering your screen shot shows that it crashed before any significant testing was done, the CPU temperature reading seems a bit high (69C). Does the machine have a fan and is it working?

[TwistedKestrel]

It is actually generally stable, there is an issue with it coming out of sleep (why I'm looking at it) but I've seen so many laptops with bad RAM I just start checking it out of reflex. CPU temperature is high also just because it's a laptop I suppose, fan is functioning and unobstructed... possibly heat soak from prior attempts at running the test.

[David (PassMark)]

Maybe there is an issue the the UEFI BIOS in this machine. In the UEFI memory map there might be some RAM marked as free, but in actual fact the RAM is used by some hardware device. So writing to these addresses during the memory test provokes a crash. You could see if there is a newer BIOS available from Dell for the machine.

[TwistedKestrel]

Maybe there is an issue the the UEFI BIOS in this machine. In the UEFI memory map there might be some RAM marked as free, but in actual fact the RAM is used by some hardware device. So writing to these addresses during the memory test provokes a crash. You could see if there is a newer BIOS available from Dell for the machine.

That sounds likely to me, particularly since MemTest 4 works fine. I have the last BIOS they released for it (A23 released Jan 16/2016). I'll try contacting them about it, don't really expect much but you never know. Thanks for your insight!

[David (PassMark)]

What would really determine if it is UEFI bug, or just bad hardware, would be to test another example of the same model machine. If they both had the same fault, it is much more likely to be a UEFI bug.

[keith]

Also, would like to point out that it froze when the memory range is 0x100000000 - 0x23E000000. So it may have froze when > 32-bit addresses were being accessed.

We have seen this issue on a few UEFI BIOS's, especially older systems.