Recommend some PC Diagnostic software?

[Jonny125]

Hi,

As the title states I'm looking for a good bit of software to diagnose a few desktop PC's. Or multiple bits of software for that matter.

Rather than testing each component in a working PC I was wondering if you guys could recommend some open-source diagnostic software? Have had a look on the net and there is so much to choose from, and I'd like to use something decent rather than just anything I come across, as I have no idea which kit sucks and which is good.

I mainly need to diagnose the motherboard, hard disks & cpu. Running memtest86 at the moment which hasn't found anything yet.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Joe C]

The best all-in-one cd diagnostic software that I know of would be the Ultimate Boot CD

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

 

[office politics]

rep'd joe c for mentioning ubcd. i know i saw this before but didnt think to use it for diags.

how does ubcd compare to hirens's boot cd?

 

[carnageX]

HWMonitor - temps

HDTune - HD diagnostics
SeaTools - HD diagnostics (SeaGate)
Data Lifeguard HD diagnostics (Western Digital)

Intel Burn in Test - CPU / RAM stress test
SuperPi - CPU / RAM stress test

3DMark06 (or any of the Futuremark products) - GPU stress test

Ubuntu Live CD (any version) - nice to have for file recovery or other troubleshooting

Ultimate Boot CD - misc utilities
Hiren's CD - misc utilities

NT Offline Password Editor - password resets

Those are the ones off the top of my head..

 

[Jonny125]

Thats great info to get me going thanks guys.

Out of curiousity, most CPU diagnostic / stress test software that I've read about tends to imply that it can "put even the most powerful cpu's in the world to it's knee's.". I just want to know that my CPU isn't faulty and will be reliable. Do I really need to stress test it or is that the process of finding out if it is actually faulty?

Stress test to me sounds like nearly breaking something....just to see if it will break, and if it doesn't break, its good. If it does break, You know it's bad, and you don't have a CPU anymore. Am I not potentially damaging the hardware by doing this?

 

[office politics]

stress test is usually designed for evaluating performance under heavy load. testers want to find the thresholds for performance breakdowns. these tests emphasize heavy usage rather than complete diagnostic.

if you're testing to find faults, you want to take more of a quality assurance approach. this approach involves testing the most amount of features in the most amount of scenarios. you want to find what conditions produce unexpected behavior. in other words, you want to try many different things with the equipment instead of slamming it with a heavy load.


edit - is the proc Intel?

if yes, click link below
http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-031726.htm

 

[Jonny125]

That looks like exactly what I'm after. Thank you!