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I have a PC that is intermittently rebooting itself, no BSoD shown, sometimes it stops to a white screen, but mostly, it just reboots! (it's set up to Not restart on a system failure and do a memory dump).

I've taken some steps to diagnose the issue, one of them is running Memtest86 and it's rebooting when doing this test too, without time to show any errors it the Memtest86 log file.

I always have this doubt when I find this: if the memory is faulty? can it reboot the PC without logging any errors? or Memtest86 is designed in such a way that it will always log errors and the machine won't reboot if the memory is faulty?...which would point to some other hardware issue.

Any clarification much appreciated.

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    Since it restarts running Memtest, it seems reasonable that there is a memory error. Two things: If more than one memory module, test them separately. Also get the manufacturer's hardware test app and test the hardware.
    – anon
    Commented May 21, 2022 at 18:52
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    When memory, or any other hardware component is faulty, it’s hard to say for sure how your system will react. That’s the nature of faulty hardware. Reseat the RAM and other connections, and keep testing and/or swapping hardware until the system is stable. Typically, you’ll want to unplug ALL non-essential peripherals as well to test if it is one of those devices. This is really a standard process of elimination troubleshooting.
    – Appleoddity
    Commented May 21, 2022 at 20:07
  • "if the memory is faulty?" -- Not necessarily. You have provided insufficient information and performed inconclusive tests. How old is this PC? What condition is it in? How long from power up to a reset? Perform a a sanity test: have the PC do nothing (e.g. let it idle in a BIOS config menu), and see if it reboots. For a WAG I'd suspect a power issue.
    – sawdust
    Commented May 21, 2022 at 20:15
  • Thanks for your answers, I know those troubleshooting steps, the question I asked is other though: I've always doubted if a memory test is designed so that the machine won't restart during testing (such as using a very small area of memory that it tests first and then tests the rest of the memory that, if faulty, is not being used, so it would always detect the faulty memory but not reboot from it, again: as it is not being used.
    – Antonio23249
    Commented May 22, 2022 at 17:25
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    IMO it is unlikely for merely testing memory to cause a system reset. This assumes that the memory test will trap any processor exceptions (e.g. trying to execute an illegal instruction) to aide troubleshooting. A well-written memory test will periodically relocate itself in memory, in order to truly test all memory. Or if the system has secondary memory (e.g. the SoCs I work with have 64KB of SRAM as well as the external DRAM), then such an auxiliary memory is ideal for running a program to test the main memory. Otherwise there's a chicken versus egg quandary.
    – sawdust
    Commented May 23, 2022 at 6:09

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