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Creating Memtest86 Boot disk

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  • #1

    Creating Memtest86 Boot disk

    Hi all, I am new to this forum and this seems like a topic that would have been posted already but I searched boot disk and nothing came up. I followed the Memtest86 how to and downloaded the zip file, unzipped it, and double clicked on imageUSB.exe. The program started and I put in a formatted USB stick, clicked write and it took a while but everything completed like I expected it to. I then restarted the computer and chose F2 to get into the bios. I first just tried setting the USB stick to the first boot option which did nothing. Then I tried removing all other boot options except for the USB stick and that only got me to a black screen but never did anything. The boot menu did show 3 different USB options. 1 said generic USB, the other two said UEFI generic USB. I tried putting them in different orders and still it wouldn't boot. I did a little more reading and read that it needs to have the UEFI options selected instead of Legacy so I found those options and tried it again, still nothing. It just boots up to a black screen and does nothing. I tried the entire process over again with a different USB stick and formatted it NTSF but still nothing.

    Any help in how to get the drive to boot or another way to run Memtest86 would be greatly appreciated.

    My computer specs:
    Mother Board : ASUS ROG Strix B450-F Gaming
    Windows 10 64bit
    see attachment

    Thanks
    Attached Files
    Tags: None
  • #2
    I probably should have posted this in the Memtest86 Forum. Admins please move if you think that would be a better fit. Thanks!

    Comment

    • #3
      Is the BIOS up to date for the motherboard?

      Was the machine mostly stable in Windows before you started?

      Can you post or EMail us the MemTest86 debug log.

      Comment

      • #4
        The BIOS is not up to date, the firmware had never been updated. I nervously tried to update it but it didn't work either. I downloaded the latest BIOS firmware and saved it to my hard drive. Then I went into the BIOS and tried to update it but it couldn't see the file as if it wasn't there?

        The machine was not stable, windows would crash (blue screen) at random and programs would randomly close. I looked up the blue screen and one of the things to try was running in safe mode and see what happens. This is how I have been running my computer for the last month or so and it has zero issues in safe mode.

        So last night I went into msconfig and tried to run diagnostic startup and when it started back up it didn't ask for my usual pin just a password and nothing worked so then I restarted and then it did the same, I was able to get to the task manager so I ran a new task and got back into msconfig. I went back to safemode with networking but then I could tell that something wasnt right because when it started up the screen resolution wasnt right. I typed in my pin number and then it just went to a black screen that goes nowhere. I am going to reload windows which should allow me back into safemode but won't solve my initial problem because I have already tried it before.

        I will post again once I can get back into windows and I will see if memtest86 works and then post the logs.

        Thanks!

        Comment

        • #5
          There is a video here showing you how to update your Motherboard firmware.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2PuzplcBzw

          But I think this motherboard also has an update from Internet option, which might be easier.

          Also if you have 2 RAM sticks, remove one, then the other. See of the system is more stable with just 1 stick of RAM.

          Comment

          • #6
            OK, I got everything reloaded, disconnected all drives except for clean drive with clean install off win10. I clearly have no idea what I am doing because I didn't realize that it made a hidden drive on my usb stick so I tried to reformat it and noticed there was a 256mb portion that I couldn't do anything with so I copied my updated bios firmware to the USB, restarted the computer and to my surprise when it booted back up it ran memtest86! so it found so many errors it just quit the test! long story short, I did get my Bios firmware updated and ran memtest and said yes to the html report but now I don't know how to find. When I go to disk manager I can see the portion of the USB with memtest on it but it does not appear under "my PC" or anywhere that would allow me to access the info on it. I am assuming I can recover the last portion by running memtest86usb.exe and reformatting the drive.

            But how do I get the log file? Will it tell me which piece of hardware is currupted or do I need to as you said unplug one stick of memory then run the test, then swap memory and run it again?

            Thanks for helping Noob figure this out, I do appreciate it!

            Totally unrelated but if you have any electrical question I am an experience electrician so I could give back in that way! Otherwise what is the best way to monetarily or otherwise support the help I am getting and the program?

            Thanks again!

            Comment

            • #7
              The USB drive has two partitions.
              One is readable. The other one isn't.
              So they will mount as something like F: and G: (but they could be another pair of letters, depending on what drives you already have mounted)

              You will find the log and HTML report in this folder.
              F:\EFI\BOOT\

              Again "F:" might be some other drive letter.

              File names will be something like,
              MemTest86-20230904-093016.log
              MemTest86-Report-20230904-093105.html

              With the numeric part of the name (20230904-093105) being the date & time the file was created.

              Comment

              • #8
                Wow, so I had deleted that extra drive on the USB, so I had to create a new boot disk and run the test again and again when I tried to boot to the USB it just hung on a black screen. I tried several BIOS settings and boot options and finally logged back into this forum to post, and I saw the question a few posts below mine that said it was hanging on a black screen and wouldn't boot. I saw that you said it was showing something with the CDROM drive. Someone had posted that they just took the CD out per your suggestion, and it worked...I took "The Black Stallion" out of my CDROM drive and rebooted and selected the first partition and BAM...it worked. Once again it hit 10,000 errors and said failed. Attached are the log files.... now what do they mean?!!
                Attached Files

                Comment

                • #9
                  More Logs...
                  Attached Files

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    logs....more logs
                    Attached Files

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      Here is the HTML Report...
                      Attached Files

                      Comment

                      • #12

                        Yes, that is a lot of errors.

                        Something is definitely wrong. Likely bad hardware or hardware configuration (e.g. voltages and timings)

                        See this page to start with.
                        https://www.memtest86.com/troubleshooting.htm

                        Comment

                        • #13
                          Originally posted by GoldenBuckeye View Post
                          Wow, so I had deleted that extra drive on the USB, so I had to create a new boot disk and run the test again and again when I tried to boot to the USB it just hung on a black screen. I tried several BIOS settings and boot options and finally logged back into this forum to post, and I saw the question a few posts below mine that said it was hanging on a black screen and wouldn't boot. I saw that you said it was showing something with the CDROM drive. Someone had posted that they just took the CD out per your suggestion, and it worked...I took "The Black Stallion" out of my CDROM drive and rebooted and selected the first partition and BAM...it worked. Once again it hit 10,000 errors and said failed. Attached are the log files.... now what do they mean?!!
                          We think we fixed a bug related to the hang when a CD was inserted. If you get a chance, can you give this build a try:
                          https://www.passmark.com/temp/memtes...-10.6.2003.zip

                          Comment

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