I managed to borrow a processor that was known to be good - lo and
behold, everything works as it should with that in place. I have a copy
of PC Check and when I ran processor diagnostics it passed all tests (as
can be seen here
http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q...ckard%20Bell/?
action=view&current=SAM_0613.jpg). I can only conclude that that
software is not really worth having and I've learnt something by this
experience.

Thanks to all who offered support and advice

Dave

On 03/10/2011 15:18, Dave Headley wrote:

I managed to borrow a processor that was known to be good - lo and
behold, everything works as it should with that in place. I have a copy
of PC Check and when I ran processor diagnostics it passed all tests (as
can be seen here
http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q...ckard%20Bell/?
action=view&current=SAM_0613.jpg). I can only conclude that that
software is not really worth having and I've learnt something by this
experience.

There are loads of test programs out there, and a surprising number are
actually quite poor at finding real world problems.

Thanks to all who offered support and advice

Thanks for letting us know the outcome. It was beginning to sound like
it was definitely hardware related. While CPU failures are far less
common than motherboard failures, they do happen sometimes (quite often
triggered by fan failure or slowdown).


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

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.

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.

Andy

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.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 03/10/2011 22:50, John Rumm wrote:
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.




Hmm. Might leave that running. My work machine keeps telling me it's
had corrected errors when I reboot it, but a weekend's windows memory
tests found nothing.

(no, I can't use my code. It was written for a '286 and won't handle
8Gb. And I don't have a floppy to boot it from...)

Andy