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unlikely: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

T400/T410/T420 and T500/T510/T520 Series
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TPFanatic
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unlikely: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

#1 Post by TPFanatic » Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:36 pm

https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comme ... ontroller/
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=900399

I've always used a memtest 86 boot CD with no problems on my T500 and other Thinkpads, although I've never ran it for more than an hour as I am impatient.
Last edited by TPFanatic on Wed Jun 27, 2018 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

#2 Post by TonyJZX » Wed Jun 27, 2018 8:40 pm

"It looks like T6x, T400/500, T410/510, T420/520 laptop families could be
affected by this problem. Starting from the T430/530 series, a
communication protocol with the EC was changed - breaking tp_smapi
driver and fixing the described problem as a side effect."

So basically do not run memtest on any of the age of laptops that we care about. Ok.

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Re: unlikely: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

#3 Post by TPFanatic » Wed Jun 27, 2018 9:08 pm

They now say it is plausible a power problem killed his machines. And I think this is more likely then memtest killing the machines. Many people use memtest and I've used it with no problems. It is designed to be run for extended periods of times. If it were really a problem with memtest it would be known by now.

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Re: unlikely: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

#4 Post by Cigarguy » Thu Jun 28, 2018 5:21 am

memtest was such and is still such a useful tool. I doubt memtest itself is the problem. Most likely it's a result of running memtest on memory, power supply and shaky motherboards. Don't doubt that a stress test is enough to kill a component that is about to fail.

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Re: unlikely: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

#5 Post by Sweater Fish Deluxe » Thu Jun 28, 2018 1:21 pm

Many people use memtest and I've used it with no problems.
Same. I've run Memtest86+ for 24 hours on both a Z61t and a T420s and never had any problems (memory was okay too!). I have no experience with T500 or that generation, though.

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Re: unlikely: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

#6 Post by rkawakami » Fri Jun 29, 2018 11:22 pm

I would say that about the only way memtest86+ could "kill" a laptop would be because the temperature of the system board and/or components got too hot. I will concede that running the memory diagnostic can cause the memory, and possibly some of the other subsystems in the laptop, to get warm. Indeed, it is one of the reasons why I recommend running memtest86+ for several passes through the entire suite of patterns. Heat is typically one of the "worst case" corners for memory; the other being lower than normal voltage.
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Re: unlikely: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

#7 Post by dr_st » Sat Jun 30, 2018 1:11 am

With that said, his original assumption (even if it turned out wrong in this case), is not impossible. I have certainly heard of hardware bugs where sensitive control bits (with the potential of bricking the hardware when a wrong configuration is selected) were exposed via unprotected memory regions.
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Re: unlikely: memtest86+ might have killed Thinkpad T500

#8 Post by axur-delmeria » Sat Jun 30, 2018 3:05 am

dr_st wrote:
Sat Jun 30, 2018 1:11 am
With that said, his original assumption (even if it turned out wrong in this case), is not impossible. I have certainly heard of hardware bugs where sensitive control bits (with the potential of bricking the hardware when a wrong configuration is selected) were exposed via unprotected memory regions.
Sounds like https://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_lm-sensors
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