How do you run MemTest?

[Yellowhello]

Hello. I've built a computer, but I am really unexperienced when it comes to flashing BIOS and running MemTest. Anything outside of the operating system except for overclocking I have absolutly NO knowledge of. Would someone please explain to me how to run MemTest, flash BIOS and other stuff like that?

edit: how do you create a bootable floppy or a bootable cd??

[Dread]

If you have a floppy drive, you can expand the program and place on a bootable floppy. Place floppy in floppy drive and reboot. Follow on-screen instructions.

If no floppy, burn a bootable CD or DVD disc, then place in drive, reboot, enter BIOS, select "Boot from CD/DVD drive" as first option, save, exit (rebooting) and follow on-screen prompts.


<edit> you edited your post when I was writing mine :)

You'll need to 'format from within Windows a blank floppy disc.
Or inversely, use a program like CDBurnerPro to make a bootable CD/DVD.

[Yellowhello]

Yeah, thanks. One thing though. In my bios, the closest thing to "boot from floppy or cd" was "boot from removable disc". I set it to that. I put the bios utility and the bios revision on a floppy drive and rebooted. My OS booted like normal! can you help me?? What am i doing wrong??

[Quakindude]

You have a line somewhere in your Bios like: Boot Order or first boot device. In there, you can set the first boot device to floppy, HDD, CD-ROM etc.

Just make sure Boot Up Floppy Seek is enabled on your main BIOS page as well.

[garetjax]

Originally Posted by Dread

If you have a floppy drive, you can expand the program and place on a bootable floppy. Place floppy in floppy drive and reboot. Follow on-screen instructions.

If no floppy, burn a bootable CD or DVD disc, then place in drive, reboot, enter BIOS, select "Boot from CD/DVD drive" as first option, save, exit (rebooting) and follow on-screen prompts.


<edit> you edited your post when I was writing mine :)

You'll need to 'format from within Windows a blank floppy disc.
Or inversely, use a program like CDBurnerPro to make a bootable CD/DVD.

It's worth pointing out that if you do make a bootable MemTest disc, you will need to create an ISO image on it to get it to boot properly.

[Yellowhello]

Can you boot from a flash drive? I tried to format my flash drive to a MS-DOS startup disc, but the MS-DOS startup could not be selected!

[PrOLifIC_onE]

Your bios MUST have the option to boot first from the CD or Floppy. When the computer is booting up keep pressing DEL. From the first bios screen, hit the right arrow 3 times to go to the "boot" menu. Change the order of your boot sequence to be CDROM or Floppy as first boot device and Hard Drive for the second boot device.... (on the off chance that you floppy isn't working or even detected by windows, it would have to be selected in the very first "main" bios screen. Make sure it is there before you even go to the boot screen)

Another thing you can try, while it booting up there may something that says 'Press F2 (or some other key) to select boot device" ...some bootup screens will have that as well, probably just under where it tells u to 'press DEL to enter bios/setup'...

Try selecting 'removable disk' and see if your flash drive works, I've never tried that before.