Memory Errors on Toshiba Tecra/Portege Laptops

[duncanchaos]

When booting from the MemTest86 USB tool on Toshiba systems with the UEFI BIOS in compatibility mode v4.3.7 runs and it is reporting errors but only when a ethernet cable is attached to the laptop. No errors occur when the cable is not connected.

This is occurring on every Toshiba Tecra/Portege model that has the UEFI BIOS. If you have the BIOS is UEFI mode and MemTest86 5.1 is run there are no errors with or without the ethernet cable connected.

Any recommendations on what the root cause of this could be? If I run a Toshiba supplied memory test tool with the BIOS in compatibility mode and the ethernet cable connected there are no errors found.

Added: The failure is always on test #5 and is always the same memory address, but each units memory failure address is different.

Any suggestions?

[keith]

The problem you're describing seems very similar to this thread:
http://www.passmark.com/forum/showth...-not-UEFI-V5-x

To summarize:
The BIOS doesn't mark off the memory reserved for your network adapter properly, so MemTest86v4 is trying to test memory that it doesn't own. This is reflected by the errors you are seeing.

UEFI most likely designated that particular memory range as reserved, and therefore is not touched by MemTest86 during testing. So no errors are reported.

[duncanchaos]

That is what I thought Keith. I will report this to the Toshiba Engineers.

Thanks for the info.