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Comments: 274 +- Hardware: Software To Diagnose Faulty PC Hardware? on Saturday October 10, @02:47PM
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Etylowy writes "Over the years I have repaired my own PC and those belonging to family and friends many, many times. While in most cases it turned out to be restoring a system after malware/the user/Windows made a mess, or simple cases of 'follow the smell of smoke and molten plastic,' there were some nasty ones where the computer mostly works. By 'mostly,' I mean: you can boot it up, it might even work for a while, but will crash way too often to blame it all on Microsoft — what do you do then? Once you strip it of any extra hardware (which, with today's motherboards that have pretty much everything integrated, might not be an option) you are left with the CPU, motherboard, graphics card, RAM and HDD. You can test the HDD, you can run memtest86+ to check the RAM, but how do you go about testing the CPU, motherboard and graphics card trio to find which is to blame? Replacing them one by one isn't really an option. Do you know of any software that would help the way memtest helps with RAM?"
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OCCT (Score:5, Interesting)
It will stress your RAM, CPU, and GPU or all at once with pretty temperature and utilization graphs (for Windows only): http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/ [ocbase.com]
Overheat (Score:5, Informative)
That's a marginal idea at best, but a common one.
While the technique of blasting a processing unit to see how it behaves at maximum temperature will sometimes find a faulty unit, many faults are not temperature related, and will not show up on this test. It's fine that you brought it up here, but something that both heats the CPU/GPU and tries to test as many pathways / as much of the instruction set as possible would be far more useful. (cf memtest86+ for RAM)
Parent
PSU (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and don't forget to check the PSU. When it acts up, it will often appear to be a hardware fault somewhere else in the machine. (often RAM, but can be MB, CPU, GPU...)
This certainly doesn't answer the posters question, but it is related and important.
Parent
Re:PSU (Score:5, Informative)
I have seen some of the most ridiculous problems that were PSU related. Serial mouse not working, VGA card outputting in B&W, slow and or intermittent performance, HD's that constantly reset (and sound like click of death in the process), new memory being blown, known good memory acting like bad memory, CD-R's that can't burn (or finish burning successfully), software modems that couldn't go off hook, AGP cards crashing, PCI cards crashing, VLB SCSI cards not working at all.
The list really just goes on and on and on. Software to diagnose faulty PC hardware? Sorry, no thanks. I had tried all manner of diagnostic and test software over the years. Some worked some of the time. (mem tests and HD scanners), the rest were borderline use-less pieces of crap. Not only that, but because of faulty PSU's (usually overloaded, or just old, or overheating, etc etc etc) I have seen those same programs misdiagnose just about everything.
Aside from simple sensor reading and verification (of code, built in HW diagnostics, etc) I do no trust 'software based' hardware diagnosis, especially on a PC.
YMMV.
Parent
Re:PSU (Score:5, Insightful)
Check supply voltages first.
There's a really fancy test program to do this... it's called a digital multimeter, and it's a piece of hardware with two probes.
You touch one probe to ground, and then use the other to check all the leads going into MB for supply voltage.
For desktops that is.
For servers, the power supplies are generally smart modular units, and you check their voltage outputs in the BIOS screens, or using remote management via BMC: IPMI, iLO, Drac, or ALOM
Parent
Re:PSU (Score:5, Insightful)
While that is good "Bad or Maybe" test, most PSU problems are transient over- or under-voltage conditions, which a DMM is not going to reveal.
And there are testers that will measure all (or most) of the voltages produced at once - you jut plug the atx cable into the device, and many of them have a pass-through, so you can test the PSU under load. I'd look for one that could flag a transient problem, if it exists.
Mind you, since writing the above I have looked around for one, and have failed! They all are pretty simple devices that do not detect transients, I could find no pass-through devices, and they all test under very anemic loads. All told, I am not impressed by any of them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes... but unless you are doing this professionally, or going way out of the way to build a full blown test rig and load bank [tomshardware.com] yourself, the gear required to fully test a PSU anywhere near max load is not worth it to the average person, a spot check with a DMM on the bench or in the PC (if the PC is working) is a good tradeoff, and if there is any question, try replacing the PSU.
Versus buying a $100,000 Sunmoon or Chroma tester. Or bench Oscilloscope + DC Load generator + Variable AC output gear (for
Re:Mod up - Everyone buy one of these (Score:5, Funny)
With hardware its usually bad psu, then bad memory, then bad caps.
Then bad karma, then bad mojo.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
On your sig, English dictionaries have a lot of definitions of free, and as I understand it, none that exactly match free as in free software. That is why people who need to be precise say gratis and libre. You are playing nominalist.
Not all your fault. The current English dictionaries are probably the result of the ongoing long-term cultural deterioration. I would expect that really old English dictionaries have the meaning.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Use a can of compressed air to purge out any accumulated dust. Less dust means a cooler box, which may just bring the unit back within whatever temperature (or, by extension, power) tolerance it is pushing the envelope on. Another technique is to wiggle every cable and connector and slotted card, just to make sure nothing has come loose. Check to make sure all the fans are running whilst powered on.
Re:OCCT (Score:4, Informative)
Did you actually install it? (or are you a typical /. reader?) It has a "GPU" option for stress testing your graphics card if you have the latest DirectX updates installed.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
many people overclock their GPUs too, so it would make sense that a tool for Overclocking stability tool would stress that as well.
what about PTS? (Score:2, Insightful)
Replace the integrated part (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Replace the integrated part (Score:4, Insightful)
Even when they do, it's usually a sign the rest of the board is on it's way out too. A device on the board not functioning can mean a number of things (MB controllers acting up, visible/non-visible corrosion in the board, blown capacitors, etc), so you can be up for a lot of weird behaviour from the board that you can't pin down.
To be honest, relying purely on a test suite to tell you what's broken will lead to disaster. Only through experience do you get the pointers toward what is actually faulty. Add to this that true diagnosis only comes from swapping out parts, and, well, test suites don't look at all like a viable option.
When I am repairing hardware about the only suite I use is memtest86+ and a decent live linux distro. You can usually pick devices that have failed with lspci, however this is not always correct. It all goes back to having test hardware & the knowledge of what certain behaviours in systems are caused by certain faults. After 15 years of working in IT with both hardware & software faults, there's only so much you can do with limited or no test hardware. Most of the time when you're diagnosing hardware faults on the phone it's an educated guess at best, the only time you truly get a decent diagnosis is when you have the machine with you and can swap parts out. Hell, we don't even use the Dell diagnostics at work due to their inability to give decent results on anything other than RAM.
Parent
Eurosoft PC Check (Score:5, Informative)
Here's its web page : http://www.eurosoft-uk.com/pc_check.htm [eurosoft-uk.com]
In any case, I recommend plugging the ATX cable into a power supply tester that presents a non-trivial load as a first step in diagnosing any PC. You'd be surprised in what ways the problems caused by out-of-spec voltages can be manifested.
jdb2
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I second this. I've had 2 or 3 PCs now that have begun acting very strangely only to discover that the real problem was the power supply. Replace it and the PC acts fine again.
Re:Eurosoft PC Check (Score:5, Informative)
Every power supply which I've found failed was visibly broken once you opened it up, and it was always the capacitors. No Exceptions - capacitors had sprayed gunk all over, their Aluminium cans had popped off the bases, etc. Typical electrolytic fluid is white-ish, but once it bakes dry will scorch, and so gradually turn reddish brown. Many capacitors have grooves scored into the tops which form sort of impromptu blow out panels, and often you will see them bulging, with traces of fluid escaping from these grooves where they are actually splitting open, or scorched fluid forming a red-brown powdery residue outlining them. The grooves are usually in either an X (or Plus) or a sort of K shape. The PSUs are often still working (somewhat) at that point, and often, the PSU may be putting out nominally correct voltages when cool but deviating when it heats up. I had one client's PC that made a loud bang twice over a period of about a week, but the PC didn't really start acting funny until the third bang. Opening the PSU revealed three small caps that had blown completely off the board. It had probably kept running with no obvious symptoms through the first two.
Of course, only a trained pro with good tools should ever examine the inside of a power supply while live. But, if you are willing to unplug one and take it out of the PC and let it sit overnight, just to make sure the larger capacitors have fully drained, I recommend examining them. Yes, that voids the warranty if you aren't a pro, but if you were going to junk it and buy a new one anyway, so what? But before you open one, read this:
DON"T EVER OPEN A PLUGGED IN POWER SUPPLY. IF THIS DOESN"T APPLY TO YOU YOU ALREADY HAVE AN ELECTRICIANS LICENCE, A EE DEGREE, OR SIMILAR. DON"T OPEN A POWER SUPPLY UNLESS YOU KNOW THE LARGE CAPACITORS INSIDE ARE DISCHARGED - THEY CAN MAKE YOUR ARM MUSCLES CONTRACT HARD ENOUGH TO BREAK YOUR BONES. GIVE THEM AT LEAST AN HOUR TO RUN DOWN, THEN USE AN INSULATED TOOL TO CROSS THE PLUG PRONGS BEFORE YOU OPEN THE CASE.
Split caps or scorched ones will confirm you are right in your guess that it's the PSU. While you're at it, if you think the problem is the motherboard, check for capacitor damage there too, as it's not all that uncommon for that to be why a mainboard fails. Cheap electrolytics are probably responsible for more than half of all consumer electronics failures, they are by far the most likely source of intermittent failures, ones that come and go with temperature, or glitches that only partly disable something, and they are detectable.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Don't trust the caps with the 'X' pattern. The 'K' pattern is more reliable.
Ask any of the many who had Dell machines from about 2000-2004. And HP/Compaq. And Acer. Not so much IBM/Lenovo. I have no reports for Gateway.
Also affected ASUS, MSI, AOpen, Gigabyte motherboards, pretty much all brands.
For a period of time, there werw substandard caps being used, but the maker either faked the testing or used different component parts in production runs than in certification. If you got stung by these, you a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
YOU SHOULD NEVER USE CAPS LIKE THIS AND NEVER SUGGEST SOMEONE BRIDGE COMPONENTS WITH A SCREW DRIVER.
I'm getting a bit tired of replying to all of the bad advice I see flying around. However, never discharge caps by bridge the connectors (even if the tool is insulated). A large enough power source can cause some serious problems.
The proper way to handle this is to terminate the load into a ground source capable of dissipating the load. Earth ground will suffice, but don't dump a crap ton of current into the
random thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
self-checking programs like Prime95 can be useful to test the computer more generally (if you've verified with memtest a failure here basically means cpu/chipset at fault).
Other things I've tried before have been (if the motherboard allows) things like significantly underclocking sections of the motherboard/processor, if an specific underclock fixes the problem you just significatnly narrowed down the list of possible failures.
there are similar programs to memtest that will check a GPUs output conforms to what it should, but if you just have random-crashy-badness that can be a pain to diagnose. Sometimes things like just running without graphics drivers for a while can help spot those problems, if the computer no longer crashes you can look a bit further away from the graphics card as most of it's capabilities won't be used.
Just replace it. (Score:2, Informative)
Repairing hardware makes no sense anymore. Just swap in a new machine from the pool, so the user will be happy again, call the manufacturer to send someone onsite to replace the system board, redeploy the image, and put the machine back into the pool.
At home, i usually replace the machine before it has a chance to get old and flaky.
Re: (Score:2)
"Over the years I have repaired my own, family, and friends' PCs many, many times".
I know RTFA is too much to ask on other articles but RTFS's first sentence on askslashdot can't be THAT much ... can it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You still don't seem to get it. Friends and family only rarely ask you to fix a machine that's still under warranty. More often you wind up diagnosing / replacing the broken part yourself, and sending them on their way.
(often the 1year warrantied hard drive that gives out at 13 months; people aren't going to replace their computer every year because of that.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How to test? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... typically you find the fault by using an application which stresses one of those components far more than any other and then seeing if the failure condition you're observing occurs more often. This is just basic troubleshooting, it's not even specific to computers.
Re: (Score:2)
Preventative Medicine - get a UPS (Score:5, Informative)
Most home computer hardware failures come from "brownouts".
If you notice that your lights dim a little bit when your fridge compressor or AirCon comes on, that is a recipe for a computer failure. Spend $50 get a UPS [amazon.com]
Btw, i noticed that my linksys wifi router was also extremely sensitive to brownouts. It would get funked up and need to be power cycled. Plug it into a UPS , no more wifi problems either.
I learned this the hard way when i moved to an old building in the east village of NYC and had 3 motherboards/cpu fail within a 3 month period.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not an Online UPS, so it won't protect against all grid issues. And Online UPS are expensive and noisy.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If you notice that your lights dim a little bit when your fridge compressor or AirCon comes on, that is a recipe for a computer failure.
Why? Doesn't the computer's PSU have enough juice in it to survive a quick dip in voltage? Besides, almost all PSUs are rated ~90-260V, so I always assumed if it dips from 230V, it won't matter.
Occasionally my lights dim but I don't seem to have had problems. I'm still waiting for my decade-old P3 to die so it can be replaced by an Atom board, but the darn thing keeps on ru
Re:Preventative Medicine - get a UPS (Score:4, Informative)
Most home computer hardware failures come from "brownouts".
If you notice that your lights dim a little bit when your fridge compressor or AirCon comes on, that is a recipe for a computer failure. Spend $50 get a UPS [amazon.com]
Btw, i noticed that my linksys wifi router was also extremely sensitive to brownouts. It would get funked up and need to be power cycled. Plug it into a UPS , no more wifi problems either.
I learned this the hard way when i moved to an old building in the east village of NYC and had 3 motherboards/cpu fail within a 3 month period.
What you really need in the case you describe is a good line conditioner. I didn't look at the 'UPS' you mentioned, but many in that price range are not a true UPS and will still allow for under voltage to occur, albeit for a shorter period if you're lucky. .
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Microscope (Score:4, Informative)
I like the Microscope products...their newest version Microscope duo boots off of a USB stick. For machines that dont boot at all they also have a diagnostic card, its basically a pci card that has an led readout that give a series of post codes that can help diagnose if its the board, a card, memory, etc. They can be found at http://www.micro2000.com/ [micro2000.com]
The handiest piece of diagnostic gear I use is actually a simple power supply tester. You would be amazed how many systems that appear to power up are actually suffering from a dead -5 or +5 rail on the powersupply. Many tend to think if the fans spinning the powersupply is ok but thats often not the case. The best part is they are cheap...around $10 for a basic one.
Hiren's... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Hiren's BootCD is the only thing you need to diagnose hardware, repair, and transfer data. You can even make a bootable USB thumb drive instead of using it as a CD. It's the gift of the Gods!
2. Be aware that just about every program in this collection is pirated. If you are making a profit through using this boot CD, purchase the F-ing programs by themselves!!! It's one thing to pirate software, it's quite another to ride off the backs of others work.
Hardware tester (Score:3, Informative)
SMART for dying hard drives (Score:5, Informative)
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki [sourceforge.net] is great for finding out what the drives think about their own health. Things to look out for are spin-retry counts (which lead to that annoying 2-5 seconds freeze), high reallocated sector counts (never never never use chkdsk to attempt to fix a broken hard drive. With the robustness of modern journaling file systems (HFS, extN, NTFS), storage errors are almost always hardware errors. Running chkdsk stresses the drive just as it's failing and usually pushes it over the edge -- and then users complain that you can't recover their data.
prime 95 (Score:3, Interesting)
Prime 95 is a good test of CPU/RAM, as well as to see if the system remains stable under peak temperature. It's often used to burn in overclocked machines.
Swap the damn hardware (Score:4, Informative)
There is no way to tell, with software, whether your PSU, CPU, or motherboard is to blame, in the overwhelming majority of cases.
It's just idiotic to say "Replacing them one by one isn't really an option". In fact, that's by far the best option. I don't run memtest for a week to find out I have bad RAM, I take 30 seconds to swap it, and find out, for certain, in no time. PSUs are equally easy to swap, AND are the more likely component to fail, so that's the best place to start.
If you don't know whether it's CPU or the MoBo, buy a new motherboard... Vastly more likely to be the cause, and pretty damn cheap just as soon as they're no longer brand new. Of course CPUs fail, but it's likely to be obvious from a visual inspection if they've been installed wrong, or otherwise abused.
prime95 (Score:2)
never heard of prime95?
it's been used for years to check stability in rigs by overclocking and gaming enthusiasts.
They even have various different "levels" of FFT tests to limit the torture tests to within CPU cache levels which tests the CPU...or more than tests the RAM, PSU, etc.
Prime95 [mersenne.org]
Serious answer: don't bother: upgrade. (Score:2)
I've done a significant amount of PC construction and reconstruction: approximately 60 from-scratch builds in 20 years. One thing that that has taught me is: do not bother to try to diagnose motherboard or CPU faults: just replace them, end of story.
Even Integrated Motherboards can be had for £40, and CPUs for £25. You can get dual-core 1.6ghz Atom Integrated-everything-including-CPU motherboards for £90.
For the amount of time and effort spent unscrewing components and testing combinatio
Practical System Stressing... (Score:4, Funny)
I stress my Linux boxes by telling them that if they develop a fault I'll re-image them with Vista.
Not a single one has dared to fail on me yet.
Power supply (Score:3, Interesting)
You didn't mention the power supply.
In my experience, a "crashy machine" is almost always down to the PSU. Out of the dozens of "crashy machines" I've had to fix, only one was due to bad memory. The rest were *all* down to faulty power supplies, and all of those were due to capacitors that had failed.
I have an oscilloscope so I can easily test for ripple without needing to open up the power supply and look for the obvious signs (bulging capacitors, maybe ones that have leaked). We've had dozens of machines at work with supplies that have gone bad this way. Bad capacitors have been a real problem in recent years. Four years ago, it wasn't just in power supplies either - we had to return 70 machines to Hewlett-Packard under warranty after the capacitors on the motherboard began failing after 3 months of use. We've not seen anything on that scale on motherboards since, but we still have frequent problems with power supplies failing from "capacitor plague".
A machine of mine was actually killed by a sudden power supply failure - the PSU let the magic smoke out with a loud "bang", and there was the sound of stuff richocheting around the computer's case. That sound turned out to be bits of exploding chips on the motherboard. The only thing that survived that incident was the CD-ROM drive - all other components were destroyed.
You don't, you swap out hardware (Score:3, Informative)
Swapping out is the ONLY way.
I have systems with intermittent (heat activated) dry joints on a mobo, partly duff RAM, and partly duff (rebranded at higher clock) CPU. ONLY swapping out will find it.
HTH etc
QuickTech or QT (Score:3, Interesting)
My shop uses it, works pretty well. A full scan can take up to 6 or 8 hours (we set up hardware diags before leaving for the night, and in the morning on a 24-channel KVM), but it is THOROUGH. VRAM, RAM, HDD, CPU, everything is tested and thoroughly. First step should be testing the PSU, then running QT.
Only a couple tools needed. (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Furmark http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/ [ozone3d.net]
Is better suited for stressing your GPU, it's also free.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It is a good start, but no more than that. Those tests are certainly not comprehensive (and should be). On the plus side, they often have your specific hardware in mind, and might possibly catch something that other tools wont. (doesn't happen often, but sometimes...)
SMART is also not the end-all of hard drive indicators. A drive can pass SMART, and still be on the way out. I've found (for those familiar with Linux) that a dd from the hd to /dev/null will often spit out errors on a drive that's getting