testing hardware - use what software ?

Roger Heflin rogerheflin at gmail.com
Tue Jun 3 19:41:08 UTC 2008


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.

                                Roger




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