[Pierre-Marie Baty]

From the memtest86 site:

Known Problems



Sometimes when booting from a floppy disk the following messages scroll up on the screen: X:8000 AX:0212 BX:8600 CX:0201 DX:0000

This the BIOS reporting floppy disk read errors. Try re-writing the disk. If that does not work replace the disk.

Memtest86 can not diagnose many types of PC failures. For example a faulty CPU that causes Windows to crash will most likely just cause Memtest86 to crash in the same way.

There have been numerous reports of errors in only tests 5 and 8 on Athlon systems. Often the memory works in a different system or the vendor insists that it is good. In these cases the memory is not necessarily bad but is not able to operate reliably at Athlon speeds. Sometimes more conservative memory timings on the motherboard will correct these errors. In other cases the only option is to replace the memory with better quality, higher speed memory. Don't buy cheap memory and expect it to work with an Athlon! On occasion test 5/8 errors will occur even with name brand memory and a quality motherboard. These errors are legitimate and should be corrected.

Memtest86 has no support for multiple processors. Memtest86 will execute without problems, but it will only use one CPU.

Memtest86 supports all types of memory. If fact the test has no knowledge of the memory type nor does it need to. Memtest86 is able to test all types and brands of memory. This not a problem or bug but is listed here due to the many questions about this issue. Changes in the compiler and loader have caused problems with Memtest86 resulting in both build failures and errors in execution. A binary image (precomp.bin) of the test is included and may be used if problems are encountered.