it keeps crashing and I don't know why

[Brad Mettee]

On 8/8/2014 10:00 AM, Markus Hoenicka wrote:
> At 2014-08-08 15:53, David Benfell was heard to say:
>> On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 03:34:31PM +0200, Markus Hoenicka wrote:
>>>
>>> Are you sure the hardware is ok?
>>
>> No, I'm not sure. But if (see below) you think the memory is bad, it
>> seems to me that some Linux live CDs at least used to include a memory
>> test.
>>
>>> I'd first stick in a live CD or thumb
>>> drive of whatever OS you can get hold of and see what happens before
>>> blaming FreeBSD for these failures. Bad memory may cause similar
>>> symptoms.
>>
>> Anything else I can reasonably test while I"m on that live CD?
>
> Well, if memory corruption is a possible source of your problems, 
> you'd better run memtest as Maxim suggested. Some Linux live CDs 
> contain it anyway, see e.g. Knoppix.
>
> regards,
> Markus
>

You can also download bootable versions of Memtest. Burn it to a CD or 
push the image to a flash drive. In either case, it contains a mini-os 
to make the media boot and run, without need for an actual OS to be 
present on the system. When I do testing, I use this one:
http://www.memtest.org/
There is also another free one, based on same code but forked some time 
ago: http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

-- 
Brad Mettee
PC HotShots, Inc.