testing hardware - use what software ?

max bianco maximilianbianco at gmail.com
Tue Jun 3 20:52:17 UTC 2008


On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Roger Heflin <rogerheflin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Robin Laing wrote:
>>
>> max bianco wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, 2008-05-24 at 00:08 +1000, David Timms wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, and shoot it with the heat gun and so on. But is there some
>>>>> software designed to do stress testing ?
>>>>
>>>> I've often asked something similar from PC shops, as their testing
>>>> seemed to comprise of just seeing if it'll boot and stay running for
>>>> half an hour...
>>>>
>>> Yes, people do not realize how hard it is to pinpoint a hardware
>>> problem. Many are under the impression there is some magic involved
>>> and results should be instant and/or provide instant "Star Trek" style
>>> solutions. We are not quite there yet , especially as far down the
>>> totem pole as your average pc repair shop. I try to use the computer
>>> as much as possible but time is money and you can easily run up a bill
>>> that exceeds the cost of a cheap machine quite quickly. However if you
>>> feel you have a genuine hardware problem then I would do the
>>> following. The order will vary depending on where you think, based on
>>> your observations, the problem lies.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> SNIP.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> All comments, criticisms, questions, pointing out of incorrect info
>>> welcome and appreciated.
>>>
>>>
>>> Max
>>>
>>
>> Very good points.
>>
>> Back in the 386/486 days, I had an ISA board that would run a bunch of
>> hardware and software tests to check the hardware.  Not perfect but sure
>> helped.
>>
>> A good digital volt meter to measure the voltage rails.  A power supply
>> that is close to being out of limits could drift enough to cause the
>> computer to freeze at strange times.  The BIOS voltage readings are not
>> always that accurate.
>>
>> Also, when cleaning out the dust.  Make sure that you know where all the
>> jumper settings are on the motherboard.  Cost me many hours when one of the
>> jumper shorting connectors came off on my computer.
>>
>> Also confirm that the latest BIOS is installed.  Even on new motherboards.
>>  This fixed a freezing issue on a new computer for me. Worked okay with 4Gig
>> of ram but not 8 gig.  Memtest worked great.
>>
>
> Compiling up something called HPL (with something called MPI) at least does
> nicely at finding that you have a memory/overheat/internal CPU issue.  If
> the results corrupt or the machine crashes something is really wrong,
> typically it won't tell you what is wrong, but if it successfully runs for a
> long time then you can expect most things to be correct.    Generally it
> will at least crash the machine several times faster than most other
> applications.
>
> It won't find IO/PCI/Video issues unless they are really severe, though
> generally most of the issues fall into what it does test.
>

Do you happen to know what the latest version is? I have turned up a
version 1.0a dated Jan 20, 2004. Do you know if that is the latest
version available.

Max




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