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Good, Affordable PC Diagnostic Software?
"The premise of PC diagnostics software is simple: provide an easy way to test for PC hardware problems, independent of software configuration. Some hardware vendors (like Dell) provide diagnostics with their systems, but they are usually model-specific and not even all major vendors provide them. Of course there are free utilities like the well-known memtest86, but I was wanted something more comprehensive.
So I started my research, and found a variety of packages, including PC Doctor, PC Check, Microscope, PC Certify, Tufftest Pro, among many others, ranging in price from $500 to $35. Some come with associated hardware, such as loopback connectors for parallel, serial, network or USB ports, or ISA / PCI cards that will show low-level POST codes for machines that appear completely dead.
Some of the vendors provided demos, but most were severely crippled. The cheaper software tended to be outdated and incomplete, lacking support for newer hardware features. Almost all practiced high-pressure sales tactics over the phone, and I discovered that one company was actually a spinoff of another by a disgruntled former employee, resulting in a bitter, lawsuit-ridden feud.
Microscope, by Micro 2000, seemed to have the most online feedback, mostly positive, but they didn't provide a demo. After contacting their sales, they suggested that if I bought a full copy for my evaluation, I could return it in 30 days if it didn't meet my needs. Well, it turned out to be buggy and missing important features found in other, cheaper products. When I called to return the product, the salesman disclaimed all knowledge of the promise they made, and they've refused to take it back. Some further digging found that I'm not the first person to be taken in by these tactics.
I still would like to find worthwhile PC diagnostics software, but the (a) lack of independent reviews, (b) shady industry sales tactics and (c) poor performance of a 'well regarded' package leave me wondering... am I a sucker for buying into the whole concept in the first place? Can anyone point me towards a reputable vendor, or an alternative set of independent tools that will do the same job?"
Sandra is a good info/benchmark util.
For windows machines, I found a little app called RegSupreme which actually does a good job of cleaning/fixing keys in the registry.
Best "tool" for tech support is a good working knowledge of the PC. If you're looking for a piece of software to do support for you, then I'm sure the rest of the self proclaimed "IT Guru's" here at slashdot will warm a spot for you in the unemployment line.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
After demonstrating the (reproducible) problem the vendor replaced the second SIMM and all was well.
Memtest is a great tool, however it is specificaly mentioned in the article itself.
If you read the article, RebornData is looking for something more comprehensive than memtest offers. (ie: more than just a memory test. I assume to include disk, bios, video, cpu information, and a variety of other system tests and checks.)
I myself question the need for much more than a disk-surface-scan tool and a copy of memtest, but it's what RebornData is looking for.
-Matt
I totally agree. And the Gentoo LiveCDs all contain the excellent mentest86 program (type memtest on the boot command line) And also, the ISO is a lot smaller than the knoppix one (if you choose the bare-scraped one you'll just need 60 megs of downloading)
Quantum hacker.
Free for personal use, businesses must register. Well worth it.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Most all the modern distros have comprehensive tools for checking the filesystems and analysis of the machine's hardware (including cool stuff like tweaking the hard drives/etc).
Random case studies WRT normal Linux operations vs. normal MS-Windows operations in the case of 'marginal' hardware situations:
Case 1: Gateways' shiped with the 'dreaded' Quantum SCSI disk drives:
We bought a couple of Gateway workstations that Gateway shipped with Quantum 9gig W/F SCSI disk drives (avoid these like the plague). With one machine, we tossed the pre-installed MS-Windows (95?) and installed RedHat Linux (5.2 or maybe 6.1). The other machine got MS-Windows NT 4.0 installed. After about 1 month, the machine with Linux installed reported disk I/O errors (and crashes). The machine would recover (fsck after hard reset in a couple of cases) -- the disk had not totally farmed, just started to lose it. We got a replacement disk (IBM) from Gateway and did a disk-to-disk transfer (dump | restore, partition by partition) and used a boot floppy to re-boot and install lilo. This was some years ago. The 'NT box reported no problems until after about 6-7 months of use. Then crashed and refused to reboot. Disk was close to complete death. We suspect that the disk in the 'NT box was probably starting to go at the same time as the disk in the Linux box, but MS-Windows NT failed to notice *minor* disk I/O errors.
Case 2: Token MS-Windows box goes off line and gets converted to a take-home Linux machine:
We had a Gateway G6-200 (PPro 200mhz) machine that was the lab's 'token' MS-Windows box (NT 4.0). For various reasons (including lack of serious use), we took it off line. Later we needed a take-home box, so we *tried* to install Linux on it. The install kept crashing. No apparent reason way. Finally, we swapped out the RAM SIMMs, and presto, Linux installed properly. I guess the RAM had developed some bad bits, and MS-Windows NT failed to notice...
*Maybe* 'NT is notorious about not noticing hardware failures. Maybe Linux is really very sensitive to "minor" hardware problems (slowly developing failures).
I know that Knoppix has excellent hardware detection (for a Linux distro at least), but how good is it diagnosing problems with hardware?
Decode these
I've had a few questions I'd love to pose to the /. community but I knew were unworthy.
Where would you suggest such questions be posed?
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
www.mihr.com
This is modded funny, but there's many a true word spoken in jest. Half the time, having a good backup of valuable files means precisely not losing hours to recover your machine. I've lost countless hours bringing my machine back purely because my backup set was too old and I wanted files back.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
I've used The Troubleshooter on numberous occasions and can attest to its ability to pinpoint most hardware related problems. It's a great program for anyone that does a lot of hardware maintenance.
~.Evanrude
My daddy called this "Frankenstein-ing." Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats it as a method for localizing hardware problems. (Of course you must have a least a few neurons firing to determine if it is the swapped component itself or an interaction between that and the rest of the system.)
It's funny because "real" engineers will look upon this with disdain. "Why, we're REAL engineers, WE come up with theories and test them. Swapping out parts means you're merely GUESSING what is wrong." Er, isn't that what a THEORY IS?
I currently have a client who is having a problem with a piece of PC based test equipment they build from scratch. It's basically a custom single board computer laptop with some additional test interfaces built in. There's a problem with the PC functionality. Multiple engineers and managers are running quite involved test programs to "prove" that the problem is one or another of their pet peeves. No one (except your Annonymous Coward hizzelf) would think of swapping a few components, making sure known good ones work in the unit and known bad ones from the unit do not work on a good PC. Oh well, when they've spent themselves and the damn thing still doesn't work, I'll have to go in and locate the problem in a half an hour. Don't worry, I'll do it off site and bill for two days of work.
That whole string of stuff you listed is almost completely software-based, while the posting asks about hardware. Besides Sandra and memtest86, you've got nothing there that would be of any use... Software problems are generally easier to solve since you can always format the disk and start over anyway.
Besides, is it legal to have a Win98 boot disk without having purchased Win98? I wouldn't think so, and this makes your $20 price tag inaccurate, especially since you're implying that you have other Windows boot disks as well.
I it was Antec that recently put out a power supply tester. It basically an LED and a few resistors with a harness for like $15 or $25 (I forget). You still need a multimeter to test it but if you get you +/-12V and +/-5V while underload you should have a good power supply. I haven't personally used it yet but I plan to pick one up at some point.
This is a great little util. I really like the burn-in tests, and the fact that it can test the different RAM slots independently (on most mobos). Trying to figure out which stick of RAM is bad in a 4 GB system using memtest86 takes too long, and involves too many stops to replace the RAM chip. This way, I just let it run overnight and remove the faulty chip when it's done.
The other tests are nice, and useful as well. And having it all on a bootable floppy is nice, as you don't have to worry about having a working OS on the system.
There was this little mom and pop computer shop, where I bought some stuff, and my buddy bought a whole computer, circa 1993-94. My buddy paid $800 for 16 megs of RAM. And he paid $250 for a honking big tower case, with wheels, and hinged panels, and almost a dozen external bays.
That honking big case was a honking big mistake. He never populated those bays, and it was too bulky to carry on public transit. Well, I had a car, and he didn't. So, when he had hardware problems he would beg me for a lift.
I can't remember how many trips we made to this store. A bunch of them concerned his flaky hard drives. The fellow replaced the drive, at least once.
Well, one time my buddy asked me to take his computer to this store for him. And this time I watched the owner's diagnostic technique. The first thing he did was take the drive out of the big honking case, and put it in his test rig. He also confessed to me that he wasn't replacing the drives any more, he would just test it, and if it was okay he was telling my buddy he had replaced it.
When I got the computer back to my buddy's place, I opened it up myself. I found that one of the pins on one of the power connectors had come loose. So it was only making intermittent connection. And this was causing intermittent problems.
Diagnosis through swapping out components failed here.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
That is of course assuming that there is a compatible linux driver for the hardware in question. If it's not supported, it won't work whether it is broken or not. It is also possible for there to be intermittent problems that won't be detected by such a cursory test.
I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
[memtest86] Let me send you my IProc PC-100 SDRAM DIMM... the idiots put the wrong timing values in it's SPD. I've only found one machine, ever, to work properly with that damn thing. Tyan MB's tend to lock as soon as the POST is complete. Memtest86 ran for 7 days and could not find a problem with the DIMM.
Heheh... I've had similar problems with RAM speeds. A couple of years ago, a bunch of SiS shared video/system memory motherboards on FIDS (flight information display systems) that I was administering would cease to work when the displays were pushed to any resolution greater than 640x480.
The symptoms were random garbage and slow refresh of the screen - ie, close a window and artifacts remain. Kick to a shell and they all disappear as the resolution is cut to 640x480.
Took a look at the RAM itself. "PC100" stickers all over the place and 10ns speed ratings on the ICs. "Okay, f = 1/t and t=10ns, so this is 100 MHz rated RAM..."
Tried swapping in another DIMM. Same problem. Tried swapping in another DIMM of another brand - no more problem.
Did a little research when I noticed that the good DIMM had 7ns labels on all the ICs...
Turned out that the PC100 specification requires all the RAM chips to have 7ns or better response speeds... and apparently, the DIMMs which didn't work came from some third-world country where the definition of a nanosecond is somewhat different than ours. (Almost like how a "watt" in computer speakers and car stereos has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific definition. Rule of thumb: amplifiers rated in real watts will tend to weigh 1/4lb per watt. Haven't yet found a similar rule for memory speeds.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
No, seriously, the best non-synthetic test of a system's datapath IMHO is to build the Linux kernel repeatedly. GCC is quite RAM and disk intensive, and so stresses the most flakiness-prone parts of a machine. Plus it gets the CPU pretty hot. This, in my experience, will make a machine with marginal memory, clock settings, or even heat dissipation fall over.
It's why I don't support end-users anymore. $349 gets you a brand new Dell. Fixing PC's is becoming pointless. I haven't fixed anything except a dead hard drive in years. SO have them spend $349 and charge them $75 to add their old HD as a slave and reinstall their software and recustomize. You'll make more money with less work. I promise.
Vote Quimby!