Memtest Mac mini M1?

[compukortschnoi]

Hi everybody!

I created a USB stick with memtest86 (https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm).

How do I boot my M1 Mac mini from it? Holding the option key during startup doesn't work, and holding the power button during boot only gives me the option either to boot from internal disk or to enter recovery mode.

Any suggestions?

Kind regards,
compukortschnoi

 

[Mike Boreham]

Hi everybody!

I created a USB stick with memtest86 (https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm).

How do I boot my M1 Mac mini from it? Holding the option key during startup doesn't work, and holding the power button during boot only gives me the option either to boot from internal disk or to enter recovery mode.

Any suggestions?

Kind regards,
compukortschnoi

Im guessing that you probably created the memtest stick with something using Linux, and M1 Macs won't boot Linux.

Most of the bootable utilitiies like memtest use Linux.

 

[jdb8167]

Hi everybody!

I created a USB stick with memtest86 (https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm).

How do I boot my M1 Mac mini from it? Holding the option key during startup doesn't work, and holding the power button during boot only gives me the option either to boot from internal disk or to enter recovery mode.

Any suggestions?

Kind regards,
compukortschnoi

From the website:

IMPORTANT: MemTest86 V9 images support only UEFI boot. On machines that don't support UEFI, MemTest86 will not boot.

So besides even the problem with OS and CPU architecture, M1 Macs aren't using EFI boot. They use Apple's custom boot loader. So unless someone wants to figure out how to boot an M1 version of the image with Apple's undocumented boot loader, the tool is probably not going to be useful. There are people working on loading Linux on M1 Macs though so in the future, this might become usable on M1 Macs but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[1PW]

Please forgive this blatant necropost.

Of course, Memtest86 does work with earlier Intel based Macs.

Even if the M1/M2 Mac boot process eventually becomes successful, the Memtest86(+) testing software would need to have been translated to the ARM64/M1-M2 instruction set. Which is what Apple's Rosetta 2 does with x86-64 Intel apps now. This assumes Memtest86 would also have been given an architecture layout update for M1/M2 Macs.

For now, we need to make good with baked-in memory diagnostics available during the Mac boot process.

Doable? I believe so if the aforementioned Memtest86 for Apple Silicon et al rewrite is undertaken.

HTH