Hi all

I have a PII-WinME machine which at start-up initialises its 328MB memory. This is not a major issue, since it takes under a minute. However, the user can simply abort by pressing Esc and on screen the correct amount of memory is then displayed. Why is it initialising its memory and perhaps there is a way to turn it off by default?

Thanks in advance


Tech

That's the memory test going on. It's a basic test of the RAM done by the BIOS at boot-up. What it does it write to each bit in RAM, then verify by reading it back. This is usually done twice.

It's not necessary to have this test run at each boot. The test is archaic and simple, anyway, and doesn't reveal a lot of the more obscure RAM defects. If you want a real RAM tester, download MemTest86. Otherwise...

Go into the BIOS menu and look for a setting that says "fast POST enabled" or "enable RAM test" or something like that. Just turn that off and the BIOS will just accept whatever amount of RAM it sees, and it won't bother to test it. With free utilities like MemTest86, I don't bother with the limited built-in RAM tester anymore...

Thanks for your response and I will try that.

Best


Tech