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PC Certify or not?

TiziteLayinLow

Senior member
I want a DOS based program that i will put on boot disk to run extensive tests on the hardware such as ram, hard drive, cpu, ide controllers.. the more the better.. this will be for pc diagnoses.. i use pc certify right now but was wondering if there was a better one out there..

thanks guys
 
For checking RAM, nothing beats a Hardware Checker.

For Hard drives, generally the manufacturer's Utilities are sufficient.

For the rest, a good hardware Diagnostic card beats any software you will find.

I guess it all depends on how many PC's you will be checking and how seriously you want to check them.

Otherwise, programs like PC Certify or Pitstop are not any less effective than DOS based software
and may be all you require.

Note: The best DOS/Windows based Diagnostic software you will find is AMIDiag (from American Megatrends).
It comes at a price though.

 
Google for "The ultimate boot CD" or something like that....

Its a bootable CD, with a exhaustive list of hardware tests.
 
It is somewhat possible to check memory with real-mode software. You can often tell if it is bad but you can never, with 100% certainty, tell if it is good. Hard drive monitoring utilities can sometimes detect bad spots on the media. Any other software used to check hardware is almost completely ineffective by definition.

Your best bet might be a kernel debugger running on a parallel machine. Running a software program on defective hardware (repeat: running the program ON the defective hardware) and asking it to check for defects is ridiculous. It's like walking into a loony bin and saying, "YOU, come here. Tell me who is sane here."

That's why so many poor sods call up their computer manufacturer who says to run a few utilities and then declares the PC perfectly healthy.
 
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