[rescue] test old hardware

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Mike -- EMAIL IGNORED wrote:
>> Two excellent stress-tests for PC/Clones: DBAN and Memtest. Both are
>> free programs that can be written to bootable disks.
>>
>> DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke) is a hard drive wiping program. It WILL
>> destroy all data on the hard drive if you tell it to. By doing a
>> seven-pass overwrite on the drive, it'll keep the machine busy for a
>> long time, and serves as a good 'stress test' for the drive itself. If
>> the drive fails, makes funny sounds, or the program reports sector
>> errors, then it's time to replace the hard drive.
>>
>> Memtest is a memory test utility. It's totally harmless to the data on
>> your system, it just exercises the RAM. Again, it keeps the computer
>> busy, but it thoroughly tests all the RAM, and will do so contiuously.
>> Leave it run overnight, and if it's still running with no errors in the
>> morning, it should be good.
>>
>> This machine might be of the proper vintage to have leaking motherboard
>> capacitors. If you experience odd reboots, crashes, and trouble during
>> POST (such as the processor being incorrectly detected), you might have
>> bad filter capacitors for the CPU. Look at the board near the CPU
>> socket, and examine the tops of the capacitors for bulging and leaking.
>> While faulty capacitors don't always show, this is a good thing to check
>> for anyway, because if they're leaking, they are on their way out, and
>> should be replaced.
> 
> memtest86+ stopped in the middle of pass 1 and
> and said everything is OK.  Should I believe this?
> Shouldn't it keep going? BTW, I am running with
> the memtest86+ CD removed. OK?

You can tell it to operate continuously.  It's been a while, so I can't 
remember exactly where that option is, though.

Peace...  Sridhar