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KRS12

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best recommendation for a hardware diagnostic tool

Looking for the best recommendation for a hardware diagnostic tool, not freeware.
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John
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I use the Manufacturer's diagnostic software. If a motherboard has errors, you need very special equipment to determine the fault and allow a fix (if a fix can be made).

Accessory devices are just replaced if defective.
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The best is the UBCD. It includes most the disk manufacturer's diagnostic tools, and to test disks you always need to use the manufacturer's tool. Besides that it includes memtest86+, which is the best utility to test RAM. Besides testing the RAM it can also indicate problems with the mainboard, for example if it stops running during the test that is usually due to either a CPU overheating, or a hardware problem with the mainboard.

http://mirror.sysadminguide.net/ubcd/ubcd536.iso

Although you specifically  mentioned not wanting freeware, it still is freeware and happens to be the best.
You need to sure the tool you use off the disk is recognized by the manufacturer. I used the manufacturer tool to find a bad drive on my new Desktop a year ago . I have the code to IBM and couriered a new drive to me overnight.
To diagnose what?

Memory, hard disk, CPU, motherboard?  You can test or stress those components with the afore mentioned UBCD.  Other OEM manufacturers (such as DELL) have their own software tools for testing.  The two big hard disk manufacturers have utils to download and test their own hard disks.

There are plugin cards that you can get for diagnostic purposes (POST cards) but these generally return motherboard error codes.  Dime a dozen on eBay (roughly $5 to $100) but I suspect they are not generic enough for all motherboards.  

I prefer the software tools and another computer to test components.  Motherboards generally either work or they don't.
The best hardware diag tools are OEM specific and youneed to check with vendor/OEM websites according to your hardware make and model.
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fred hakim
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it depends on what problems you want to diagnose
if your motherboard has problems - there are no diagnostic tools - you can test the connected devices - but that's all
the only thing  you can do in such a case is install a fresh os on a spare drive, and see if it works; or run from a live cd, like knoppix, or ubuntu:   http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html      

i also use often the UBCD - as suggested above - it has diags  for most problems