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BrianGEFF719Flag for United States of America

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Diagnostic Software

Hello I have a quick question. I need good FREE diagnostic software that will function under DOS or that is self-bootable. So I can trouble-shoot PC problems.


-Brian
Avatar of buckeyes33
buckeyes33

what type of problem are you wanting to trouble shoot.  anything specific?
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buckeyes33

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BTW

those are all boot disk
Avatar of BrianGEFF719

ASKER

I dont need tools for anything specific, its just the girl friend is complaining that all I do is program all day and I need to get a job, so ill fix peoples computers.
I just need stuff that I can take into the field with me to make my life easier, because I can fix anything wrong with a computer, its just I wont have all my stuff with me in the field, and I would prefer stuff that will run under DOS or that creates its own boot disk, such as the hard drive tools you mentioned.
>>I need to get a job
haha


memtest and all the things hard drive software are bootdisk.  Some of the ones at majorgeeks are boot disk also.

one program that you will find will come in handy on a system that is still bootable is this:

http://www.aida32.hu/aida32-download.php

might be the best free software there is.


unless you want to purchase hardware that will do on the go diagnostic that is the basic list.  As far as i know there is not something bootable that will check a motherboard.  

one other suggestion for you would be to keep a known good power supply with you, along with some basic RAM, piece of cardboard to test for grounding,  and a older good video card.  most of which you might have lying around.
Avatar of Adrian Dobrota
Brian ... I strongly recommend you trying Hiren's Boot CD v 5.0  
It's pretty hard to find it on the web, but you'll be able to google for it I guess. If not check here, but the links are not available all the time: http://talks.mark-itt.ru/forum/35/175.html

It's a great tool, use it as it is,  cause it's exactly what you need for this job, but consider buying separately the programs that are written on the bootCD and that require a license. It's the fair way.  :-)

Cheers
KronosTM

P.S.  Please share with me your opinion about this CD when you'll try it.
kronostm: i found the CD as an ISO, is the cd bootable or am I going to need to use a bootdisk that has CD rom support??


-brian
the disk is bootable
Krono: the cd looks good however, whenever I try to load a program that requires access to my disks it freezes, it cannot load dos for somereason.

-Brian
<< whenever I try to load a program that requires access to my disks it freezes >> you mean to the hard drive or CDROM?
Try HWINFO: http://www.hwinfo.com.  It's shareware, but fully capable, simply need to type a key periodically.  Gives you low-level information about everything in your PC.  There are DOS versions and Win32 versions (the Win32 version works in 98 and up).

- Jer
PC Diagnostic Software

http://www.pcpitstop.com/


MicroScope diagnostics

Our PC diagnostics software is called Micro-Scope, a collection of diagnostic routines, benchmarking and other tools for rapid troubleshooting of PC computer hardware. It includes full memory testing, motherboard diagnostics, peripheral diagnostics, plus utilities for low-level formatting & much more. In a product called the Universal Diagnostic Toolkit, MicroScope diagnostics are combined with another Micro 2000 exclusive called Post-Probe. This is used to diagnose 'dead' PCs with POST or Power On Self Test codes.

http://www.micro2000uk.co.uk/


PC Diagnostic Software / PC Diagnostics  
Computer Diagnostic Software

http://www.trainingplanet.com/html/novell_cne_training.htm



BELARC ADVISOR.  You can download a short file at

http://www.belarc.com/Download.html 

and this software will take a snapshot
of your system and display a Web page providing a complete summary.  The
data resides on your local system and is not sent to a Web server.   The
report provides information on all hardware and software you are
running.  It even tells you the version number.  And it's all free, for
personal use, and supports Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP.



PC WIZARD 2004

BootLIST 140
Date: 2/28/2004 8:50:14 AM Pacific Standard  

A Pretty Good Hardware Inventory Program

     Doug R. emails in response to the USB article last issue:

     PC Wizard 2004 will tell you which version of USB is supported by
     your motherboard.

      95% of the above type of utils simply assemble the existing
     data windows has already accumulated in different areas during
     your windows install. They just put it all in one, easy to find
     place. I didn't take the time to test all the specific functions
     of this app but it's free to use and fun to try.

     It does appear, however, that PC Wizard does support the latest
     technologies, which means that it _does_ gather data
     independently of Windows, which is a nice positive for gathering
     accurate information but note that such searches can instantly
     lock your PC so make sure when you run diags like this you do so
     after a clean boot with nada else running or you're bound to lose
     recent data [eg current windows, etc.].

     http://www.cpuid.com/pcw.php



Since 1996 PC WIZARD is among the most advanced system information programs on the market.

PC WIZARD 2004 is a powerful utility designed especially for detection of hardware, but also some more analysis. It's able to identify a large scale of system components and supports the latest technologies and standards. This tool is periodically updated (usually once per month) in order to provide most accurate results.

PC WIZARD 2004 is also an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, Cache performance, RAM performance, Hard Disk performance, CD/DVD-ROM performance, Removable/FLASH Media performance.  


Hardware Information

Mainboard / Bios (Connectors, ID String, MP Support, ...)
Chipset (FSB Frequency, Norhtbridge, Hub, ...)
Main Memory (FPM, EDO, SDRAM, DDR-SDRAM, DDR2-SDRAM, RDRAM, Timings, ...)
Cache Memory (L1, L2, L3, Size, Frequency, ...)
Processors (Type, Speed, Multiplier coeff., Features, ...)
Coprocessor
APM & ACPI
Busses : ISA, PCI, AGP (2x, 4x,8x), SMBus/ i2c, CardBus, Firewire, ... )
DMI / SMBIOS
Mainboard Sensors, Processor, Hard Disk & Battery (voltage, temperature, fans)
Video (Monitor, Card, Bios, Capabilities, Memory, Integrated Memory, Frequencies...)
OpenGL & 3Dfx
DirectX (DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectSound (3D), DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectInput, DirectX Media)
Keyboard, Mouse & Joystick
Drives (Hard Disk, Removable, CD-ROM, CDRW, DVD, ...)
SCSI (Card, Controller, Adapter, Devices, ...)
ATA/ATAPI & S-ATA (Devices, Type, Capabilities, S.M.A.R.T. Features)
Ports (Serial, Parallel, USB, IEEE-1394)
IDE & SCSI Devices
Twain & WIA Devices
PCMCIA (PC Card) Devices
Sound Card (wave, midi, aux, mix, AC'97 codec)
Printers (Local & Network)
Modem (Features, Speed, ...)
Network

System Information
MCI Devices (mpeg, avi, seq, vcr, video-disc, wave) & ACM
SAPI
Passwords
DOS Memory (base, HMA, UMB, XMS, EMS, DPMI, VCPI)
Windows Memory
Windows (Version, Environment, Desktop, XP Themes,...)
TrueType & OpenType Fonts
WinSock (Internet), Telephony et Remote Access
OLE (Objects, Servers,...)
Microsoft® Applications
Activity (Process, Tasks, Threads)
Modules (DLL, DRV, 32 & 16-bits) & NT Services
Internet Explorer
ODBC
CMOS/RTC
Ressources (IRQ, DMA, E/S, Memory)
System files (.ini, .log, .bat, .nt, .dos,...)

System Benchmarks
Processor (MFLOPS, Whetstone, ...)
L1, L2, L3 Cache, RAM (Bandwidth, Latency ...)
Main Memory (Bandwidth, Latency ...)
Hard Drives
CD/DVD Rom
DirectX 3D

Tools
Can save, print, e-mail a report
Can save a TXT, RTF, or HTML report
Can compress report to .CAB or .ZIP
Can export any graphics as BMP file
Can export text and graphic with the clipboard
Web update Wizard
Communicate with Motherboard Monitor
Dump (Hardware registers, System BIOS, video BIOS,...)

Multi Languages
English
French
I have used PC-Check in the past well its not free
BrianGEFF719,
any of this helping?
Try Tufftest Lite (it is free) and if you want to purchase it, you can do so by buying Tufftest Pro

http://www.tufftest.com