Diagnostic Tools

[obsidian]

Just wondering what people around here use for normal PC diagnostics software. I currently have a computer that crashes or blue-screens after about 3 hours of use, I assume it's overheating but I don't see any overly high temperatures.

[Therac-25]

memtest? I know Ubuntu installs an memtest86+ entry by default these days. That's worth running. I'm sure there's something similar out there for drives and controllers.

Can you make it crash earlier by running it hot? That would at least provided evidence for the temperature hypothesis.

Last time I had an issue like this was with my mom's PC. It would just fail on bootup. The diagnostics we ran primarily involved pricing out a new Mac for her.

[AmIdYfReAk]

CPU And MObo information, Post it
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Temperature information, post that as well
http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Have you check the windows Log's?
Control pannel administrative tools Event Viewer "system" look for red/yellow markings.

if you are interested in Prime95/memtest/etc
download/burn/use this CD, it has everythign that you would want.. but post the above shit first.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

[AmIdYfReAk]

The diagnostics we ran primarily involved pricing out a new Mac for her.

Everything can be Fixed, its just a general question of how far you're willing to go...

[creep]

The diagnostics we ran primarily involved pricing out a new Mac for her.

Everything can be Fixed, its just a general question of how far you're willing to go...

Doesn't seem like he was suggesting it couldn't... just that that's the route they took.


Anyway, obsidian... you probably put the heatsink on before mounting the motherboard. You cracked a pathway and now when it heats up, it opens. =)

To answer the question, though... I don't use any troubleshooting software. I guess I have nothing useful to add.

[Foo]

I've experienced more blue screens due to drivers than I have due to overheating or some broken component.
The reason XP doesn't blue screen as often as 95/98 used to is because all the running processes are abstracted away from the hardware and therefore can't crash it in the traditional manner. The exception to that is certain classes of hardware drivers that write direct to hardware/memory. Chances are a blue screen is being caused by one of them.

Best way to find out the root cause is to turn on the small memory dump option in windows error reporting, then use the 'Debugging Tools for Windows' software to read the dump file and find out which driver file is causing the crash. Once you've got that, you can identify the offending driver.

[obsidian]

To answer the question, though... I don't use any troubleshooting software. I guess I have nothing useful to add.

GREAT POST! A+++++++++++!!!!!!!!!!!! WOULD READ AGAIN!


Thanks to everyone else though. I'm familiar with the tools Amidy posted, but never really used them since the computers I build are usually rock solid and rarely have problems needing diagnostics in the first place (hear that creep, even after I installed the heatsink on the mobo FIRST). I needed reminding and also wondered if there was anything new these days since the last time I looked into it. But this crashing computer is my dad's so I'll have to give these a look and I'll report back if I find anything. Thanks Foo, I'll give that a try as well.

[creep]

Hey at least I acknowledged my uselessness while taking a poke at you.

[obsidian]