good free hardware diagnostic tool?

[Jacks_85]

hey guys

so i want to see if any of my hardware is not functioning properly and my friend told me to find a hardware diagnostic software

wondering if anyone can suggest a free and good one...if you can please put the link also

thanks!

[Steve R Jones]

Memtest86 for the ram

All hard drive makers have testing software

[DoubleK]

The one and only:

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

It has memtest as Mr. Jones suggested. I would not consider it free as I implore others to make a donation to keep the project alive. What an incredible way to empower people such as us. PayPal him 5 bucks!

[zepper]

I find most of my free software at MajorGeeks.com . In the INFO section at the right of the home page, there is an entry for "Top Freeware Picks". Their suggestions are pretty reliable. For memory testing, I keep three programs on hand: Memtest 86, Memtest 86+ and M$'s free testing program. One or the other will catch almost any RAM problem given enough passes. Most hard drive mfrs make a diagnostic utility for their own drives. I'd use that along with any 3rd-party program for best results. The best hard drive tester is still SpinRite, but it costs money and takes forever on modern, oversized drives on any but the lowest level of test. The first version of SR was developed when hard drives were measured in Megabytes not hundreds of GigaBytes... SiSoft Sandra is good diagnostic software, but it is Shareware and the free use part is limited in functionality - it is also downloadable via MajorGeeks.

.bh.

[DoubleK]

Name of Tool Version Notes
CPU Tests
CPU Burn-in 1.00 The Linux version which is included in UBCD is at V1.00. V1.01 applies to Windows only.
Mersenne Prime Test 23.5.2 Need to update Mersenne Prime Test boot disk to allow user to manually override the decision (based on automatic CPU detection) to run V23/V24. The original maintainer does not have time to do this, so if you are interested to help, please contact me directly.
StressCPU 24-Oct-05
Memory Tests
Memtest86 3.3
Memtest86+ 1.70
Windows Memory Diagnostic n/a
DocMem RAM Diagnostic 3.1beta
TestMem4 4
Peripherals Tools
Parallel port detection and test utilities 1.45
ATAPI CDROM Identification 2.22
CHZ Monitor-Test 1.01
CPU Information
Intel Processor Frequency ID 7.2.20041115
Intel Processor Identification Utility 3.3.20061218
x86test 0.10a
System Information
AIDA16 2.14 Discontinued
NSSI 0.59.14
PC-Config 9.33
ASTRA 5.31 Demo version
PCISniffer 1.5
PCI 1.1 pcidevs.txt: 13 Feb 2006
CTIA 2.7
DIMM_ID 3.01
Benchmark Tools
System Speed Test 32 4.78
3D Benchmark VGA 1.0
CPU Benchmark n/a
CD Index 1.1
QwikTest n/a
BIOS Tools
BIOS 1.35.0
WipeCMOS 1.2
CMOSPWD 4.8
!BIOS 3.20
Hard Disk Installation Tools
MaxBlast 5 (Maxtor) 5.0
DiscWizard 2003 (Seagate) 10.45.06
Disk Manager (Seagate) 9.56a
Disk Manager (Samsung) 10
Hard Disk Diagnostic Tools
Drive Fitness Test (IBM/Hitachi) 4.09
Diagnostic Tool (Fujitsu) 6.90
SeaTools for DOS (Seagate/Maxtor) 1.09
SHDIAG (Samsung) 1.25
HUTIL (Samsung) 1.21/2.03 From soeren: "HUTIL 2.00 lacks the possibility to view the SMART values and it appears to be a lot slower than 1.21. It's only needed for the newest Samsung drives, the "older" ones still work with 1.21."
DLG Diagnostic (Western Digital) 4.15/5.04c V5.x has been reported not to work on some older machines, so V4.15 has been included as a backup.
Data Lifeguard (Western Digital) 11.2
SCSIMax (Maxtor/Quantum) 1.21
GWSCAN (Gateway) 3.15/5.09 V5.x is for IDE hard drives larger than 10GB. For IDE hard drives 10GB or smaller, V3.15 is recommended.
ESTest (ExcelStor) 4.20
Salvation HDD Scan and Repair 3.0 Demo version
MHDD32 4.6
ViVARD 0.4
HDAT2 4.52 For personal use only
Hard Disk Device Management Tools
Feature Tool (IBM/Hitachi) 2.05
AMSET (Maxtor) 4.00
MAXLLF (Maxtor) 1.1
UATA100 (Seagate) 3.06
Ultra ATA Manager (Western Digital) June, 2003
SUTIL 1.01
ESFeat (ExcelStor) 2.10
ATA Password Tool 1.1
SMARTUDM 2.00
ATAINF 1.3m
Hard Disk Wiping Tools
Darik's Boot and Nuke 1.0.7
CopyWipe 1.14
Active@ KillDisk Free Edition 4.1 Free Edition. Supports "One Pass Zeros" method only.
PC INSPECTOR e-maxx 0.95 Actual version is 0.95 Build 775, but is referred to as 1.0 on product website.
HDDErase 3.1
Hard Disk Cloning Tools
HDClone (Free Edition) 3.2.6
g4u 1.17 Unable to integrate latest version of g4u (does not like mkisofs -N flag, which is required for integrating Windows CD). If anyone knows of a workaround, please email me.
UDPcast n/a
PC INSPECTOR clone maxx 0.95 Build 769 Actual version is 0.95 Build 769, but is referred to as 1.0 on produce website.
XXCOPY 2.93.1 Latest version on website says 2.95.3, but XXCOPY16.EXE still shows 2.93.1.
EaseUs Disk Copy 1.0
COPYR.DMA Build 013
CopyWipe 1.14
Hard Disk Low-Level Editing Tools
Disk Editor 3.0
DISKMAN4 4.01
PTS DiskEditor 1.04
Partition Tools
Ranish Partition Manager 2.40 Using stable version because V2.44 is beta and reported to be buggy.
Free FDISK 1.3.0
SPFDISK (Special FDISK) 2000-03t
XFDISK (Extended FDISK) 0.9.3 beta
Cute Partition Manager 0.9.5 Although website says 0.9.6, program version and history log both says 0.9.5.
PTDD Super Fdisk 1.0
Partition Resizer 1.3.4
FIPS 2.0
Active@ Partition Recovery 2.1.1 Demo version
TestDisk 6.5
Partition Saving 3.40
MBRtool 2.3.100
MBRWork 1.07b
Boot Managers
Smart BootManager 3.7.1
Gujin 1.9
GAG 4.8
XOSL 1.1.5
Super Grub Disk 0.9590
File Tools
DOS Navigator 6.4.0
File Maven 3.5a
Necromancer's DOS Navigator 2.15 Build 4000
D-Browse 1.24 Must enable long filename support for it to work.
Volkov Commander 4.99.08 alpha Or you can just type "vc" at the DOS prompt to launch this file manager.
Eraser for DOS 5.82
NTFS Tools
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor 070409
Active NTFS Reader for DOS 1.0.1
EditBINI 1.01.1
Boot Partition 2.60
Avira NTFS4DOS Personal 1.9 For personal use only
Anti-Virus/Malware Tools
F-Prot Antivirus for DOS 3.16f For personal use only. Virus definition: 4 May 2007.
McAfee Antivirus Scanner 4.40.0 For personal use only. Virus definition: 3 May 2007.
BugHunter 2.1 Note that C:\ has to be accessible and writable, otherwise BUGHUNT.INI must be edited and the line C:\BUGHUNT.DAT changed to X:\BUGHUNT.DAT, where X is the drive letter of the RAM disk.
Network Tools
Arachne WWW Browser 1.90
NetCopy 0.2
FileLink 3.01 This program is part of Caldera OpenDOS V7.03
QNX Demo Browser (network + modem version) 4.00
DOSRDP 2.0/XP
DOS Boot Disks
FreeDOS Boot Disk 3.40 This is named dosubcd.igz under the images subdirectory, and is the default boot disk for most DOS programs under dosapps. You can easily make other DOS disk images your default by renaming the appropriate image file (eg. lzubcd.igz) to dosubcd.igz.
LZ-DOS Boot Disk 3.40
OpenDOS Boot Disk 3.40 Won't work in a virtual machine, but will work on a physical machine.
MS-DOS Boot Disk 3.40 By default, this is not included in UBCD due to its commercial nature. But you can easily download and place it under the images subdirectory in order to use it.
NwDsk: NetWare Boot Disk 3.40 You can run TinyHost by choosing the "tinyhost" profile after booting. Then you will be able to connect remotely from any Java-capable machine with the command java -jar tinyclient.jar x.x.x.x password (password defaults to 'nwdsk').
MSRRC: Bart's Network Disk Clone 3.35
Linux Boot Disks
Tom's Boot Disk 2.0.103
BasicLinux 3.40
Trinux 0.89 The latest incarnation of the Trinux project is ubuntutrinux, but a stable release does not exist yet.

Hard to beat this one utility. I keep it on a flash drive so I can keep the antiviral and malware definitions updated. Making it bootable from a flash drive isn't to hard. I keep both due to some stubborn pcs that do not like to boot from cd/dvd and usb.