[[!meta date="2014-12-22 13:04"]]
[[!tag linux usability]]
[[!summary memtest86 fails because of broken usb stick it was on]]

# motivateion

a few months ago i had to fix a computer and was using memtest86 from a ubuntu usb boot stick. the program always returned this error:

[[!img media/memtest86-fail.jpg caption="memtest86 fails because of broken usb stick it was on" size=800x style="float: none"]]

# the problem & solution

interestingly **the problem was not caused by a memory problem**. the most probable cause was a broken USB stick image that caused memtest86 to fail for some unknown reason. after i dd'ed the ubuntu 14.04 image to the stick again, it keept finding no issues onwards.

hours of wasted time only because memtest86 was broken!

# conclusion

**note:** should've created a dd'ed image of the stick to check for differences to the ubuntu 14.04 image, to find out the cause of this memtest86 issue. i always assumed that memtest86 would check itself first, before doing checks on ram but this seems to be no the case [citation needed].

now i'm confused about the usefulness of memtest86 ;P