BurnInTest V5.x FAQ (old release)

Last updated: 8/May/2008

Q. My License key does not seem to work.
Both the User Name and Registration Key must be correctly entered before the software turns itself into the registered version. See this step by step guide for help.

Keys from V5.0 of BurnInTest will work in V5.1, V5.2 & V5.3 of BurnInTest.
Keys from the 32bit version of BurnInTest will work in the 64bit edition of BurnInTest.
Keys from BurnInTest V1, V2, V3 & V4 will not work in BurnInTest V5. But you can upgrade.
Keys from BurnInTest Standard edition will not work in BurnInTest Professional edition.
Keys from BurnInTest for Linux will not work in BurnInTest for Windows.

If you purchased BurnInTest 4.0 within 6 months of BurnInTest 5.0 being released you are entitled to a free upgrade to BurnInTest 5.0. You can request a new key from the BurnInTest free upgrade page.

Q. How many licenses do I need if I purchase the software?
You need 1 license per machine that is running the software, or has the software installed at the same time.

Example 1: You have a PC production line that produces 10 machines per day. You test each machine during the night. So a maximum of 10 machines are running the software at any one time, and you re-image the machine before shipping. 10 Licenses are required.

Example 2: You are a company that takes delivery of no more than two new machines at a time. You want to burn in both machines at the same time. 2 licenses are required, assuming you uninstall the software before putting the machine into service.

Example 3: You have 5 staff in the field repairing PC's. Each technician carries a copy of BurnInTest with them on a USB drive. 5 licenses are required assuming the software is always run from the USB drive.

Q. The test run stops after 15 minutes, why ?
With the shareware version the tests will only run for 15 minutes at a time. After the software has been purchased, the time is unlimited. Note that you can still get a much longer test run in the shareware version by clicking on the Go button each 15 minutes After the software has been purchased the test duration can be increased from the, ‘Auto Stop’ field in the ‘Test preferences’ window.

Q. I’ve lost my registration key, how can I get it back?
Mail us at telling us the name that was used to register the software, your E-mail address, the name of the product (BurnInTest), and roughly the date when the software was purchased. We will mail your key back out to you.

Q. How does BurnInTest work? Doesn't it just wear my computer out ?
Societies’ reliance on computers means that the cost of hardware failure can be enormous (and embarrassing). BurnInTest thoroughly exercises PC hardware in the shortest period of time so intermittent or hidden problems are found before they turn into a disaster. The typical life span of the main moving component in a PC, the hard drive, is quoted at around 300,000 hours by manufacturers such as Seagate. The use of BurnInTest for a 6 to 12 hour period would thus have a no significant impact on the life of the drive. On the other hand, it would allow manufacturing faults and intermittent faults to be detected in a controlled manner when the consequences of failure are minimal.

Q. How long should I run BurnInTest for?
Not an easy question. In our opinion, the chances or finding a problem in the first hour are relatively high, (the system gets hot, it's the first run across the disk / CD and the first use of some of the drivers). Then every hour after that, the chance of finding a hardware problem drops significantly. The extra benefit of doing 12 hours compared to 6 hours is thus probably not great. Other nice technique is temperature cycling. All major manufacturers of electronic equipment do this, they have large ovens and fridges in which they test equipment. The expansion and contraction of components and solder joins brings to light many problems. You could do 6 hours On, 6 hours Off, then 6 hours On, to get some limited temperature variation like this. NASA and the Army load their equipment on to vibration machines, but this may be going too far for home / office use.

Q. How can I use BurnInTest to test for counterfeit oversize capacity USB drives
See this guide for detecting fake drives.

Q. Does BurnInTest run under DOS ?
No. There is no version of BurnInTest that runs under DOS. While there are some advantages of running tests under DOS, there also plenty of disadvantages. Not all hardware devices are supported under DOS,  DOS is not multithreaded and the user interface is poor. BurnInTest will however run from a floppy disk or CD under Windows (see below).

Q. Does BurnInTest v5.0 support the use of BurnInTest V4.0 configuration files ?
Yes. BurnInTest V4.0 configuration files have the .cfg extension, while BurnInTest V5.0 files have the extension .bitcfg. You can either rename the BurnInTest V4.0 configuration file name to have the .bitcfg suffix, or load and save the configuration file in BurnInTest using the menu option "Configuration" -> "Load config" which accepts both .cfg and .bitcfg configuration files, and then "Configuration" -> "Save config as" to save the configuration file as a V5.0 configuration file.

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. Can I add my company logo and company information to the BurnInTest test certificate report?
Yes. The test certificate introduced in BurnInTest 5.0 is a HTML document (BITCertificateTemplate.html). It is almost completely customizable, such as style, your company logo, company information and the certification statement. The only 'fixed' component of the report is a tag ("<!--BITCERTIFICATE-->") that marks where BurnInTest will insert the results information.

You will need an HTML editor to modify the test certificate for your company. For example:
(1) To insert your Company Logo, the first item in the <body> of the HTML file is a <table> containing your company name and logo as a gif file.
<p>Put your company logo here:</p>
<img src="./Passmark_logo3.gif">

You should modify the text in the first line to be your Company name, and change the logo gif filename to a file containing your company logo.

(2) To change your company information you should edit the footer in the HTML file:
<div class="footer">
Put your company name here:<br>
Suite 10, Level 1, 38 Waterloo St., Surry Hills, 2010, Sydney, Australia<Br>
Phone + 61 2 9690 0444 Fax + 61 2 9690 0445<Br>
E-Mail: test@example.com<Br>
</div>

Please see the "Preparing a Customer Test Certificate" (index item "Test Certificate") in the BurnInTest 5.0 help file for more information on modifying the test certificate.

Q. BurnInTest does not have a test for my specialized hardware. Can I add my own test to be run with the other tests ?
Yes. If you have specialized hardware that BurnInTest does not test, you can write your own test and integrate it with BurnInTest V5.0.
Up to 3 plugins can be specified. PassMark has developed plugins for the following tests:
- Modem testing, using PassMark's ModemTest software;
- Keyboard testing, using PassMark's KeyboardTest software,
- Firewire port testing, using a Passmark developed plugin and a "Kanguru FireFlash" drive.
Sample software in C and C++ is also available to assist developing a plugin for your specific hardware.

Q. Can I test my system without an operating system?
Yes. A bootable CD can be created with Microsoft Windows XP and BurnInTest 5.0 Professional using Bart Pre-install Environment. Many BurnInTest users can benefit from testing PC hardware when there is no Operating system installed, or the Operating System is inoperable. This can be useful for testing PC hardware:
1. In a production line environment,
2. That is to be shipped with Linux,
3. In a known virus free environment and
4. To try to determine the cause of corruption of an Operating System.
A document has been produced to assist people in setting up an environment that allows PassMark BurnInTest to be used in these situations.

Q. Problems with 2D and 3D testing on Windows 2003 server, (and .NET server) ?
In Windows 2003 server, (and .NET 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. How can I setup BurnInTest to run from a USB drive or CD/DVD under Windows ?

1. Download the current version of BurnInTest Pro without the installer and uninstaller here. This is a zip file.
2. Create a directory (e.g. BurnInTest) on a USB drive or CD (to be written to the CD at the end of step 3). Unzip all of the files and copy them to the directory created on the USB drive or CD.
3. Make a 'key.dat' file (see below) and include it on the USB drive or CD in the same directory as the BurnInTest executable file (bit.exe), as created above. If you are creating a CD, now select Write these files to CD.
4. That's it, you're finished. BurnInTest should now run from a USB drive or CD and pick up the license information automatically. Using the Windows Start / Run menu option you can for example enter the following 'g:\bit.exe' to start BurnInTest from the USB drive (or replacing "g:" with the relevant drive letter of the USB drive or CD drive).

Making a key.dat file

1. Create an ASCII text file (e.g. using notepad).
2. The first line must contain the username.
3. The second line must contain the license key
4. Save the file in the same directory as bit.exe with a file name of key.dat. Click here to see an example key.dat

When running BurnInTest this way, there will be no files left on the PC after BurnInTest has finished. The procedure is the same for a CD, but as it is not writeable for log files, logging should be either turned off or specified to be on a writeable drive . You can also get more sophisticated by having multiple test configurations, there is some information about this in the online help file. NOTE: If you are using the unlicensed evaluation version you need to be careful that the date and time is set correctly on all the PCs.

NOTE: From V5.2 of BurnInTest, the default directory for User files is the User's personal directory (eg. on XP this is typically, C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\PassMark\BurnInTest). When you run BurnInTest from a USB drive you will probably want the default directory to be the BurnInTest directory on the USB drive. To do this, start BurnInTest with the command line parameter "/p" (see BurnInTest help for more details).

This process is only suported in the Pro version of the software, not the standard edition.

Q. I am not using the 3D test and don't want to install or update DirectX. Can I skip the DirectX warning message on startup?
Yes. Start BurnInTest with the "/x" command line parameter (see BurnInTest help for more details).

Q. Is there anyway that BurnInTest can be used in an automated fashion, on a production line ?
There are a number of features built into BurnInTest to help automate system testing. This includes a number of command line parameters like: "/r" - run BurnInTest tests automatically, "/m" - display the machine ID data entry window on BurnInTest startup, "/c" - load a user defined configuration file on BurnInTest startup, "/s" - run a user defined test script on BurnInTest startup. See our white paper on this subject and BurnInTest help.

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 ugdating BurnInTest, uninstalling Nero (or just the DivX codec) or upgrading or downgrading the Divx software or not using the video test in BurnInTest.

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 have a quad core/ dual core/dual CPU system, does BurnInTest test all CPUs ?
Yes. BurnInTest starts test threads for each CPU, CPU core and Hyperthreaded CPUs. This can be seen from the Windows Task Manager (Performance tab).

Q. Are there any recommendations when using the USB2.0 Loopback plugs with BurnInTest ?
V6.1.1 (or higher) of the device driver should be used.

Q. Can I test my FireWire ports ? How ?
Yes. The recommended way to test FireWire ports with BurnInTest V5.0 is to use the PassMark Firewire plugin and a a "Kanguru FireFlash" drive. Earlier versions of BurnInTest can be used to test a Firewire port by connecting an external hard disk via the FireWire port and test the connectivity with the disk drive using the BurnInTest disk test. Note: Similarly, to test external memory card readers/writers or other removable drives, it is recommended that the BurnInTest disk test is used.

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 message "Error allocating RAM from windows" but have > 1GB of RAM installed?
The standard memory test uses the virtual memory system to allocate RAM for testing. When you have a large amount of RAM installed BurnInTest attempts to grab as much as it can for testing. The problem with this is that you only need a small amount of memory fragmentation to stop the memory allocation from working. Windows allocates 2GB of address space for each application and for machines with a large amount of physical RAM, BurnInTest will be trying to grab a large percentage of all the virtual address space. Windows then reports an error for the memory allocation because there is not sequential unfragmented virtual address space available. The more physical RAM you have installed and the longer the burn in period, the more chance you will have of seeing this problem..

The advanced RAM test in V3.0 and higher of 32-bit BurnInTest Professional allocates physical RAM up to 64GB and should not suffer from the same limitation. It can also allocate RAM even if badly fragmented. To do this type of memory allocation (and avoiding the standard Windows memory management system) requires the 'lock pages in memory' admin right. See the BurnInTest help file or users guide for details about how to set this right in Windows. The advanced RAM test is only available in Windows 2000 and XP professional (but not XP Home).

Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 also contains some changes to reduce virtual memory fragmentation.

Q. I having trouble setting the 'lock pages in memory' in Windows XP?
Windows XP security rights can be complex to set up and manage. If you have followed the instructions in the help file for setting the 'lock pages in memory' right and still have a problem, try setting this right for "Everyone" and not just for the "Administrator".

Q. I want to test my tape drive, how do I know what device ID to use ?
If your system has only a single tape drive, then the system device identifier will be tape0, and the physical definition will be \\.\tape0. If you have more than one tape drive, then their physical definition would be automatically assigned by Windows (NTDETECT.COM in NT) at startup in the increasing order of their SCSI id's. So if you have two tape drives with SCSI id's 3 and 5, then the tape drive with SCSI id 3 would be \\.\tape0 and the tape drive with SCSI id 5 would be \\.\tape1. For BurnInTest you only need to enter the device identifier (TAPE0, TAPE1, etc..). You must have a windows device driver installed to use the tape drive. So if it is not working, this is the thing to check. Note also that Windows 9x do not support tapes drives.

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.

Q. How do I install the software, I need some help to "Unzip" the file I have just downloaded.
Most of our software is now distributed in self extracting archives ('.exe' files) so you don't need to 'unzip'. However some download sites prefer the Zip version. If you need help to unzip a file see our Unzipping page.

Q. Why aren’t the MMX tests available on my computer ?
MMX instructions only became available in later model Processors (e.g. The Pentium II). If you don’t have one of these CPUs then the test can not be run.

Q. I don’t need to do any more tests, how do I uninstall BurnInTest ?
Use the "add / remove programs" icon in the Windows control panel.

Q. How do I setup the Advanced Network test to test more than 4 network ports on my system?
The BurnInTest help file contains information on the workings and setup of the Advanced Network test. In summary, this test allows an M:N network test, where M is the number of PC's running BurnInTest and N is the number of PC's running Endpoint software. To test say 6 network ports on a system you will need to run BurnInTest on this PC with 6 network ports. For this test you would only run BurnInTest on this one system. You will also need other PC's (1 or more) on the network with 6 (or more) Network Adapters and these systems must run the Passmark Endpoint software. The Endpoint software can be found in the BurnInTest installation directory, and should be copied to the Endpoint PC systems. You specify the Network ports on the BurnInTest system to test, the network load, protocols etc in Preferences -> Network -> Advanced Network Test -> Edit Options -> Test On/Off etc.. You do not specify the Endpoint Network port addresses as these are determined automatically by BurnInTest. The advanced network test can also be used to test the Endpoint systems Network ports and intermediate networking equipment.

Here are some general comments about occasional system crashes.
Problems can occur if your computer runs out of system resources because there is some process or driver that doesn't release memory, handles, semaphores, etc.. back to the operating system. After a long period of uptime Windows runs out of resources and dies a terrible death. What can you do about this? Identify the offending software, if you can, and disable it. This can even be a bug in the Operating system however.

Computer can have a Random Crash. What do we mean by this? Many things can bring down a computer. Typical things would be a spike on the power line, a strong burst of Electromagnetic interference (e.g. Mobile phones, electric motors, etc..). If your system is running at its limits due to overclocking or your components are running at the top of their temperature range, small external influences can push your system over the edge, resulting in a terrible death. If you believe in Chaos theory (and most scientists now do), then you also have to believe that computers will just crash unexpected from time to time, how often would depend on the design tolerances built into your hardware. What can you do about this?
- Do as the military do. Buy military specification computer hardware that has higher tolerances.
- Do what NASA does. Run 3 computers at the same time, expecting one to give the wrong answer or crash.
- Do what most big banks do. Run a hot standby system, that can takeover the job of the main computer in a few seconds.
- Do what the Telecommunications industry does. Buy equipment with N+1 redundancy and switch traffic off the faulty hardware. Almost all Telecommunications hardware also has a built in Auto-reboot function. Why? because they know it will eventually fail.

Timing issue. Some software / hardware bugs only show up in very very rare occasions. Classic examples of this are Hardware or Software Interrupts occurring in a critical section of code. What can you do about these types of bugs? Almost nothing as a user. They have plagued software since the first line of code was written they are very difficult problems to find and are almost never picked up during software testing. Problems can occur in Drivers, the operating system, your hardware, everywhere. As everyone is always on a tight deadline, endurance testing often doesn't make it into a software developers test plan.

Mundane program bugs are, of course, also a major cause of failure.

 

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