Why Windows-based? You can't test all the RAM while Windows is running.

Plasma wrote on 2022-01-05, 03:27:

Why Windows-based? You can't test all the RAM while Windows is running.

Multi tasking, I can do it while playing with other stuff.

When the computer is running memtest it’s totally unusable for anything else I may be setting up or testing on a new build

But you can't test the memory that "other stuff" is using. So the test will always be incomplete.

I just let memtest86 run overnight.

Plasma wrote on 2022-01-05, 10:42:

But you can't test the memory that "other stuff" is using. So the test will always be incomplete.

I just let memtest86 run overnight.

Yeah, I understand 🤣.

But sometimes when I’m working on it that doesn’t mean staring at memtest for hours end, if I run memtest in windows and it finds something while I’m working I can try to address it then and there while installing drivers, games, changing windows layout, copying files etc.

Yeah, I’ll ALSO run memtest86+ later, when I’m not using the computer in question

prime95

Windows XP has no good ones, for Windows 7 (And maybe Vista) you would have the built in memory tester in windows which reboots the PC and does it properly.
The best thing you can do for your Windows XP machine is burn a CD (or USB stick) with Memtest86+ which you can download from here : http://www.memtest.org/#downiso its by far the best memory tester on BIOS based systems.