Problems During Testing |

Q. My system crashed after X days of running BurnInTest but after a reboot was OK again. See the general comments below about system crashes and fault finding tips. Q. My system is unstable. What can I do ? See general instructions for tracking down a fault

Q. Problems with 2D and 3D testing on Windows 2003 server and Windows 2008 server) ?
In Windows 2003 and 2008 server all video card acceleration is turned off by default. In BurnInTest you'll see the error,
3D Graphics test : Error initializing Direct-X device
You need to manually turn it back on if you plain to do video testing. It seems that Microsoft's position is that this acceleration isn't required for typical server functionality. Anyway to fix this,
1. Start the Display applet in Control Panel (go to Start, Control Panel, then click Display).
2. From the General tab, click Advanced, then select the Troubleshoot tab.
3. Move the "Hardware acceleration" pointer to Full.

Q. BurnInTest crashes at the start of testing. This might result in a hardware reset, an invalid page fault or a partial crash with a window being empty (black).
The most common reason for a fault like this is a problem with the 3D test which uses DirectX 9.0c.

There are a number of video card drivers that don't support hardware accelerated DirectX correctly or have bugs under particular versions of Windows. This can result in a system crash and sometime strange rubbish appearing on the screen. What you should do is:

• | Prove that the crash was in fact caused by DirectX. This can be done by turning off the 3D Graphics test in BurnInTest and then checking that this prevents the crash.

• | Check that you are using the latest certified video driver for your video card (ask your computer / video card supplier or check their web page).

• | Use the "DxDiag" program to verify your drivers and test Direct3D. You should find "DxDiag" in c:\windows\system or in c:\program files\directx\setup.

A number of hardware manufacturers produce video cards which have very poor software support for 3D graphics (DirectX). This is especially the case for the cheaper, bottom of the range video cards. Poor drivers can result in strange visual artifacts appearing on the screen, poor 3D performance and system crashes. The old saying of, "you get what you pay for", seems especially true for video cards, Beware.

Q. I have a ATI Radeon video card and after running for a while the system hangs.
There are particular drivers versions from ATI that have known bugs in them. So try either older or newer versions. ATI seem to put out a new set of drivers every second week so we have given up trying to track their versions numbers.

Q. I get the error "2D graphics, Failed Windows call - Bitmaps" and I have a Matrox or nVidia video card.
This error was seen on a Matrox Millenium G550 with drivers 5.82.18.0 20-02-2002 running on XP. When the screen saver starts up, this error occurs. This is a bug in the device driver. Newer drivers from Matrox will hopefully correct this problem. Otherwise you will need to disable the Window screen saver before running BurnInTest.

Update: This problem was also seen with some versions of the nVidia video card drivers.

Q. BurnInTest crashes (with rubbish on the screen or a black screen) when the monitor powersave feature turns on after X minutes of running.
Some video cards' device drivers seem to have a bug that causes this crash when the monitor goes into powersave mode. If you disable the monitor powersave feature (from the Power Management window in the Windows Control panel) this resolves the problem. The main offender seems to be the Maxtrox G400 video card. We have had only 1 report of this problem so it doesn't seem to be very common.

Q. I get an error like, " Protection Error: Debugger detected - please shut it down and restart" ?
There are several causes for this error, but the most common is that there is an known incompatibility with the Nero 6, Nero 7 and BurnInTest. We have circumvented this problem from V5.3.1005 of BurnInTest. The problem can be resolved by updating BurnInTest, uninstalling Nero (or just the DivX codec) or upgrading or downgrading the Divx software or not using the video test in BurnInTest.

Q. I get time-out errors during the serial port test?
If you are testing serial ports at a high speed, together with USB ports, it should be noted that some chip sets have been reported to have limitations while under load high load. Contact your manufacturer regarding these types of limitations.

Q. I get an error with the parallel port test, "Error loading parallel port device driver"
This is a known problem in Windows 2000 & XP. It can occur when you are running BurnInTest Professional from a networked drive. In this case Windows may fail to load the device driver required to provide access to the parallel port. The only solution, for the moment, is to copy the BurnInTest files to a local drive before running it.

Update1: This has also been seen, even when BurnInTest is on a local drive. It seems to be a timing issue. BurnInTest will automatically attempt to reload the driver after a delay of a few seconds and the test will continue correctly thereafter.

Update2: We have one report that with Gigabyte motherboards you need the latest VIA chip set drivers to get the parallel port test working.

Q. For the parallel port test, the detailed log file indicates some errors, which are not, indicated in the main window of the BurnInTest. Why ?
If a byte is read from the parallel port and it is determined to be wrong, then there is a 2nd attempt to read the same byte (at least 10ms after the 1st attempt). If the 2nd attempt gets the right value then there is no error reported in the main window. If the 2nd attempt also gets a wrong value then the error count in the main window is incremented. In the case of corrupted data being received during the parallel port test the following information is included in the log file.

Sent = the byte value sent to the parallel loopback plug
Rec = the byte value returned from the parallel loopback plug
Att = Read Attempt 1 or 2 (see above)
RawByte = When a byte is read from the pins on the parallel port the bits are in the wrong order. This is the RawByte. After the bits are put back in their correct order then they should match the Sent byte. This is displayed mainly for our debugging purposes.

Q. I get the error, "No permission to open RAW network socket" with the Network test.
If you don't have administrator privileges and you are logged onto a Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 system you will get this error with the Network test. You need to have administrator privileges to run this test. In Windows 2000, there is no way to disable this security check. Access to Raw Sockets is granted on a per-transport basis. For the address family AF_INET, only administrators have the access necessary to create Raw Sockets.