On 03/10/2011 20:32, Andy Champ wrote:
On 03/10/2011 17:02, John Rumm wrote:
There are loads of test programs out there, and a surprising number are
actually quite poor at finding real world problems.

I used to write test programs.

Yup, done my fair share of "built in test" software as well. Very time
consuming to actually get something sensitive enough to be useful, and
not too trigger happy!

It's very hard to find dodgy kit when you want it. Most things either
work, or fail completely. It was over a year after I had written a
memory test from examining the chip design that I first had feedback
that it was actually doing something in the slow mode it didn't find in
the quick 30-second test. I never did get hold of a flaky CPU.

Disks with flaws are of course easy to find.

Not sure if it still applies to current versions, but the Mersenne Prime
Search program "Prime95" had a "torture test" mode, which was one of the
best apps I have found to really stress Windows machines. Its surprising
the number of systems it would shake out faults on that would otherwise
sail through most memory and CPU tests.



--
Cheers,

John.

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