Prime95 23.7 readme.txt...
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POSSIBLE HARDWARE FAILURE
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If the message "Possible hardware failure, consult the readme file."
appears in the results.txt file, then prime95's error-checking has
detected a problem. After waiting 5 minutes, the program will continue
testing from the last save file.
Could it be a software problem? If the error is ILLEGAL SUMOUT and you are
running Windows 95/98/Me, then there is some chance that this is a software
problem. A device driver or VxD may not be saving and restoring FPU state
correctly. Windows NT/2000/XP protects prime95 from bad device drivers.
In that case ILLEGAL SUMOUT is very likely a true hardware error. The good news
is that prime95 recovers very well from ILLEGAL SUMOUT errors. Try seeing
if the problem occurs only when a specific device is active or a specific
program is running.
The other two errors messages, SUMINP != SUMOUT and ROUND OFF > 0.40 are
caused by one of two things:
1) For reasons too complicated to go into here, the program's error
checking is not perfect. Some errors can be missed and some correct
results flagged as an error. If you get the message "Disregard last
error..." upon continuing from the last save file, then you may have
found the rare case where a good result was flagged as an error.
2) A true hardware error.
If you do not get the "Disregard last error..." message or this happens
more than once, then your machine is a good candidate for a torture test.
See the stress.txt file for more information.
Running the program on a computer with hardware problems may produce
incorrect results. This won't hurt the GIMPS project since all results
will be double-checked. However, you could be wasting your CPU time.
If you are getting several errors during each primality test, then I
recommend using your machine to factor Mersenne numbers or run less
strenuous distributed computing projects at
http://www.mersenne.org/projects.htm.
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