Extended Memory Testing

Script Type: Bash

A faulty RAM chip on a computer can cause all manner of odd issues, including problems booting the computer, software crashes, system freezes (spinning pinwheels) and spontaneous reboots.

For Mac models released prior to early 2016 and the MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017), the user may also notice a repeating three successive tones then a five second pause when the RAM fails the startup data integrity test.

Extended memory testing stress tests the RAM for errors by writing patterns of ones and zeroes to unused parts of RAM. It reads the patterns back, then verifies what was read matches what was written.

When a pattern mismatch is detected, it indicates bad or faulty RAM and the Extended Memory Testing task fails.

As the Extended Memory Testing can take a long time to complete and tests the unused parts of the RAM, we recommend you run this Task when the computer is not in use.

The Task output contains information on the RAM and the results of each test.

Parameter	Description
Only run script if user is logged out	If this option is enabled and a logged-in user is detected, the task queues until they have logged out. The logged-in user receives a notification that a task is waiting for them to log out. After they log out the task runs.
Hide macOS notification when script is run	Run the task without notifying the user.