Good, Affordable PC Diagnostic Software? 512
"The premise of PC diagnostics software is simple: provide an easy way to test for PC hardware problems, independent of software configuration. Some hardware vendors (like Dell) provide diagnostics with their systems, but they are usually model-specific and not even all major vendors provide them. Of course there are free utilities like the well-known memtest86, but I was wanted something more comprehensive.
So I started my research, and found a variety of packages, including PC Doctor, PC Check, Microscope, PC Certify, Tufftest Pro, among many others, ranging in price from $500 to $35. Some come with associated hardware, such as loopback connectors for parallel, serial, network or USB ports, or ISA / PCI cards that will show low-level POST codes for machines that appear completely dead.
Some of the vendors provided demos, but most were severely crippled. The cheaper software tended to be outdated and incomplete, lacking support for newer hardware features. Almost all practiced high-pressure sales tactics over the phone, and I discovered that one company was actually a spinoff of another by a disgruntled former employee, resulting in a bitter, lawsuit-ridden feud.
Microscope, by Micro 2000, seemed to have the most online feedback, mostly positive, but they didn't provide a demo. After contacting their sales, they suggested that if I bought a full copy for my evaluation, I could return it in 30 days if it didn't meet my needs. Well, it turned out to be buggy and missing important features found in other, cheaper products. When I called to return the product, the salesman disclaimed all knowledge of the promise they made, and they've refused to take it back. Some further digging found that I'm not the first person to be taken in by these tactics.
I still would like to find worthwhile PC diagnostics software, but the (a) lack of independent reviews, (b) shady industry sales tactics and (c) poor performance of a 'well regarded' package leave me wondering... am I a sucker for buying into the whole concept in the first place? Can anyone point me towards a reputable vendor, or an alternative set of independent tools that will do the same job?"
Sandra (Score:5, Informative)
It was nice finding out that the RAM I bought from Coast-to-Coast memory that I got a "deal" on was actually a step down in terms of speed (which they were selling for the "sale" price...so it all worked out).
They have diagnosit tests, but I've only used the free version. But its a nice first-line strategy for sizing up machines.
Low Cost (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.linuxforum.com/linux_wallpapers_full
Since you mentioned Dell (Score:5, Informative)
Excellent Software (Score:5, Informative)
Right on! (Score:2, Informative)
I use make buildworld (Score:4, Informative)
Another vote for SiSoft Sandra (Score:4, Informative)
A tip: run it as Administrator or you'll get limited information out of the BIOS. And if you're using *nix, you'll have to look elsewhere.
yahoo articel today (Score:1, Informative)
about free programs an editor at yahoo recommends.
i think there was a free "pc testing software"
mentioned too.
memtest86 (Score:5, Informative)
The best tools for checking memory are memtest86 [memtest86.com] and the follow-up memtest86+ [memtest.org].
Both of these are free to download and use. I usually leave them running for roughly 24hrs for a reasonable level of confidence. You should also burn-in the other major components too but memory is the best place to start.
#1-TuffTEST Pro, cheap, bootable (Score:5, Informative)
ultimatebootcd (Score:5, Informative)
Forget expensive software (Score:5, Informative)
Consider a motherboard failure for instance - a failing motherboard can in effect emulate any other hardware failure - ide controller bad? Your software may blame the hard drive. Bus problems can cause memory checks to fail.
I recommend you carry a simple bootable cdrom that loads the entire system (disk i/o, memory i/o and cpu load) and checks for errors. When a system fails these checks all it tells you is the problem is definately hardware and not a buggy driver or other software issue.
See BartPE [nu2.nu] for a good free solution.
F.I.R.E. (Score:5, Informative)
Barking up the wrong tree... (Score:4, Informative)
Most OEM's are fairly accomodating if you describe problems in a decent amount of detail (and the machine is under warranty).
If these are white boxes, you're probably better off keeping a pile of spare parts around. A quick swap can get a machine up and running quickly.
Good Luck!
Hardware Specific (Score:3, Informative)
Re:F.I.R.E. (Score:3, Informative)
aida32 (Score:2, Informative)
And it is free.
http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php [aida32.hu]
SpinRite and Memtest (Score:5, Informative)
DisplayMate (Score:3, Informative)
pc diags (Score:1, Informative)
Hard Drive Diagnostics (Score:3, Informative)
Some products (Score:5, Informative)
Other tools you might be interested in;
Aida32 [aida32.hu] basically lists all of your devices, drivers, wmi software entries, pci devices, etc. for windows - needs an install, though.
OnTrack [ontrack.com] sell Easy Recovery Professional; the "file repair" options are pretty crappy, but for serious, near-forensic recovery on fscked up filesystems, ERP is a fine tool. Some of OnTrack's software (i.e. SMART tests, usually) may be licensed by the manufacturer of your harddrive, so check those pages out.
SiSoft Sandra is recommended a lot, but I don't find it offers a lot of diagnostics, though it is prone to crashing.
On windows, you might want to check out the Event Viewer, hidden in the Computer Management section of the (classic) Control Panel -- it will list all sorts of errors and notifications, kind of like
AIDA & PC-Config & NSSI (Score:4, Informative)
Check those out.
All those tools suck (Score:5, Informative)
Microscope from Micro2000 is actually the best of the bunch, but that's not saying much. If your computer won't even post, non of these tools will do you any good. (They do have some good training materials for those wanting an A+ or N+ COMPTIA cert.)
The PCI cards that display diagnostic codes are better than the software in those cases. They still aren't very helpful though. Basically they will tell you there is a problem with the memory, or the parallel port, etc., but they won't tell you exactly what's wrong so they aren't of much use either.
Here's my advice:
1. Get the power supply tester from PC Power & Cooling. It's $20, and in my experience most of the time the reason a computer won't even post is because the cheapass power supply that came with the case died.
2. Carry a bunch of known good parts: an AGP and a PCI video card you know work, a PCI network card and PCI modem, some known good RAM (PC 100 and DDR), and a good hard drive. Ideally, these are all in a fully working computer you've brought to the site so you can swap between the working computer and the not-working computer and narrow down the problem. Resist the temptation to fix the system with your known good parts; make them buy new, name-brand components with a warranty.
3. Bring a USB keyboard and mouse. I've seen lots of 3+ year old computers have their PS/2 connections short out or stop working but their USB ports are just fine. They can solve input problems.
4. Have a Knoppix CD in your kit. The linux forensic toolkit can be of great use recovering files and finding problems.
It has been my experience (Score:5, Informative)
Allow me to give you some background:
I have done IT work for 4.5 years. I work with Novell, RedHat, all (disgusting) flavours of Windows, BeOS, Sun, SGI, Apple (Mac) and QNX. I support everyone from Joe Grandma to major Universities and Medical Colleges.
I have several CDs worth of useful tools at my disposal, all of them free:
Ad-Aware: I consider this to be my single best resource in the fight against Windows NT (and up) flakery.
www.trendmicro.com does an on-line virus scan. Not perfect, but usually finds the major ones.
Demos of Anti-Trojan. Again, good enough for the closing of trojan ports left open.
AVG Anti-Virus software. Good, free AV software, if Norton isn't available.
Winzip: Obviously a good thing, many many drivers come zipped.
A CD full of the most common NIC drivers from the biggest vendors.
nVidia and ATI drivers.
Via drivers
All the latest browsers on another CD.
MemTestx86 (as you have found): Allow me one point further int he favor of it, major memory makers will accept their RAM bad, no questions asked (in my experience) if you tell them it was checked and found bad, via MemTextx86.
SiSoft Sandra, if for nothing else than the CPU-Burn wizard. If the CPU is bad, Sandra will find out.
Emergency Boot disks and cd-rom access disks (sadly, the Win98 boot disk is pretty handy)
A live Linux and live BeOS CD (very handy for recovering data of hosed systems)
And last, but not least, a good Google search. Another thing that has saved my skin time and again is to input exact error messages and see what Google turns up.
This whole cd-wallet has set me back perhaps $20, and does far more than "professional" diag tools can hope to accomplish.
What I've found useful... (Score:2, Informative)
Easy Recovery Professional [ontrack.com] is AWESOME. It fixes 200-some file extensions. All office suite files, zips, etc. We used it a lot on enormous PST files that would blow up at 2gb~. It fixes them in half the time of M$'s ScanPST tool.
Further, this product will do all sorts of HDD checks, and can does great file recovery. It's saved our asses a bunch of times. Just take a read.
It might seem kind-of expensive to someone on their own, but not to a mid-sized company. It's worth it's weight to me. They do have different licensing options and offer different/lighter versions of the product for less $$$.
The sucky thing about it's licensing scheme is that it's based on how many drives you run it on.
I've also heard that wininternals [winternals.com] has an great product [winternals.com] but if I remember correctly it was really expensive.
Best hardware diagnostic (Score:5, Informative)
I remember back at school where the tech support guys were ripping their hair out because a lot of the school issued PCs were coming back with random crashing problems. (I had a roommate who's machine would crash everytime the screensaver kicked in). They were replacing parts left and right and it never seemed to fix the problem. My roommate had everything replaced except the case at one part, and it still crashed on a vanilla Win3.1 install. It took them awhile to realize that most of the machines had bad memory, and the vendor supplied replacement memory for the systems was usually bad as well. I eventually loaned my roommate my memory sticks, and when his system didn't crash he went back to the PC guys and told them exactly what the problem was and made them continue swapping in RAM sticks until they finally found one that worked (apparently the RAM was OK in their hardware RAM tester, but failed once it was actually put in PCs. They suspected the same thing was happening at the vendors end. They would get bad memory, test it and not discover a problem, then ship it right back to the school.
911 rescue CD (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.911cd.net
You will have to download all the tools required seperately and have your own windows CDs to create the boot images on a single disk.
Check it out it's a freeware project.
sysinternals (Score:1, Informative)
Re:memtest86 (Score:2, Informative)
Anyway, certainly he *mentions* memtest86 but he didn't say that he used it - wanting 'something more comprehensive'. I am suggesting that he shouldn't be so dismissive given that experience suggests testing the memory properly is a good place to start.
Why he wants a costly, all-in-one package rather than a comprehensive set of free tools seems peculiar to me (and to other posters).
He didn't mention memtest86+ either.
microscope (Score:2, Informative)
IBM'S PC Doctor (Score:3, Informative)
To find it go to IBM support pages and start looking for Diagnostics, you will eventually find it.
Try AIDA (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php [aida32.hu]
Ziad
Quite true...and another truth... (Score:2, Informative)
The other truth I wish to share is that you MUST under ALL circumstances get things a Salesperson says to you in WRITING before agreeing to purchase ANYTHING. I work as a Purchasing Agent primarily and I tell you what... Salespeople are often far worse then mythical Genies, they will twist everything you say and turn your own purchase orders against you if you don't have them worded just right and don't cover all the bases as well...
Re:Excellent Software (Score:5, Informative)
Also of note, troubleshooter comes on one floppy disk and one backup floppy disk; it cannot be duplicated by any means I could discover, even for backups. "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
Re:Just for the record (Score:1, Informative)
Ultimate Boot CD (Score:5, Informative)
Free and includes loads of software.
Re:F.I.R.E. (Score:1, Informative)
But I don't see it being very useful for troubleshooting hardware.
The best way to use F.I.R.E on Windows is to learn to "shovel shell" to another machine with netcat and then run fred-nc.bat. You get a great forensic report without writing to the hard drive of the machine you are investigating.
Re:Low Cost (Score:4, Informative)
CDRW's don't boot in every CD-ROM player in existence. If you know you will be restricted to modern enough CD-ROM drives, fine, but if you want the broadest support, you have to burn on CD-R (even if you have to consider them as disposable items)
Re:memtest86 (Score:2, Informative)
QuickTech, OnTrack ESR and SpinRite (Score:4, Informative)
I'm lead tech at a smallish computer shop. Over the years we've used just about everything to aid us in diagnosing hardware issues. The ones we use most are:
QuickTech Pro - This is great for testing memory, serial ports, video RAM, and just about every other problem that you can experience. In the past we've had so many problems with recieving bad RAM from our vendors that we now run the quick memory test from QuickTech on every PC before it leaves our shop.
OnTrack is simply the best when it comes to data recovery. They aren't cheap, but for a small-medium business their software is well worth the price. We've also purchased some of the MS Office add-ins to help us recover corrupted Word/Excel documents better. This program really works, and if it can't recover something off a failing drive (or something that a user deleted by accident) then Ontrack will almost certainly be able to recover the data at their facilities (for a steep price of course).
I'm not a huge fan of the guy that wrote SpinRite, but if you've got a FAT(16/32) partitioned drive that seems to be failing, this tool is great. It will recover bad sectors off most drives (not seagate), especially the ones that happen when Win9x doesn't get shut down properly due to a power surge or the like. This software is free and takes a very long time to run at its highest level.
Other than these 3 programs and a few other niche utilities we generally diagnose all other problems by having known good hardware and swapping out to see if the problem still exists. It is still, without a doubt, the best way to diagnose a hardware problem other than Technician's intiuition.
Re:QuickTech Pro from Ultra-X (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sandra (Score:5, Informative)
Going back on topic, let me share what I've learned about troubleshooting hardware issues. First, let me stress that it's usually not a hardware issue. Drivers, resource conflicts, and buggy BIOS/Firmware code is usually the issue. When it comes to "diagnostic" software for real hardware problems, there's little you can do. For memory, there's MemTest-86 [memtest86.com]. This program hasn't failed to spot bad memory for me yet. For hard drives, go to the manufacturer's web site to get a bootable diagnostic floppy. Usually the quick tests are all that's needed, but it could pay off to do the extended test if the quick one says everything's OK. Even if the extended test comes back fine, don't rule out the drive. The problem could be intermittent. For the rest of the hardware, simply swap components around until you narrow it down. Take out that video card and toss in a spare one that you've had for several years and know works. For the CPU, toss in any other CPU that matches the original's architecture (Just a different speed rating is OK). I think you get the idea on the (Swapping out) method. Also, never underestimate the crap a poor power supply unit (PSU) can throw at you! Stability issues could be coming from an unreliable current. Of course, temperature problems could also cause these same stability issues, but that's much easier to monitor. When you get to a point where you're truly stumped, some manufacturers have forums that you can go to for help. This is especially true in the homebuilt market with Abit, VIA, AMD, etc.
Good luck and happy hunting!
-Lucas
OT: Get it in writing (Score:3, Informative)
swerving back on topic: perhaps its time for a set of OSS tools for diagnostics.. some parts exist now, such as memtest86.....
CheckIt Diagnostics by Smith Micro Software (Score:3, Informative)
What I like about it is that in the same box you get both a version that boots and runs from a single DOS boot floppy, as well as a Windows version on a CD ROM. I almost never use the Windows version because the DOS version is very comprehensive. The only complaint I have is that I can't find a way in the DOS version to make the diagnostics run "n" number of times. Their memory test is very thorough, but I'd like to leave the whole thing running for a few days. Maybe they've corrected that in newer versions?
They don't have an eval version on their web site, but maybe you can contact their sales department about getting one. Please note that they now have a product called CheckIt86 which has nothing to do with the DOS version (e.g. 8086) but is an ad-blocker.
Good Diag Software (Score:2, Informative)
S/w-based h/w diagnostics is an oxymoron (Score:2, Informative)
I will most often have found and fixed a problem long before a diagnostic is ready to report. And if it is an extremely hard or intermittant problem, the diagnostics are not going to help anyway! I've found even harware-based diagnostics (you know those units that plug in to an ISA/EISA/PCI/whatever slot), to be ineffective as well; they work great when the hardware is fine, but fall over without a useful result when it's not. Think about it. As some others have said here, nothing beats the old noggin' as the best diagnostic software available (I guess we'd have to call it "wetware" though!).
Free Microsoft Windows Memory Diag (Score:3, Informative)
Supposedly pretty good, it boots off a floppy or CD so it looks like it will run under Linux. I haven't had a chance to try it myself yet.
Re:memtest86 (Score:2, Informative)
i'd like to second this. i had some crucial ram giving me trouble so i called their tech support folks, told them memtest86 failed, and they were quite satisfied. it turns out that our motherboard came with two different chipsets. the chipset we had was incompatable with the memory they sent and they crossshiped the replacement.
Re:Low Cost (Score:1, Informative)
Another one I've found is the BartPE that was here the other day. I build one from a Win2k3 server install disk and tested it, it works reasonable well considering it's a hack ontop of a hack...
The true utility of BartPE is the 3rd party(non-ms and non-bartpe) utils that can be added to it for recovery, AV and cleanup purposes.
Of course, I was rather amazed that it found my network card... but oh well.
Try BartPE if you have to troubleshoot windows systems, you might like it.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ [nu2.nu]
Re:Sandra - NO GOOD (Score:5, Informative)
Likewise, anyone can write a driver bad enough to make the video tests fail, but that doesn't mean the video card is actually defective.
Years ago, I worked at a PC manufacturer and we used QAPLUS FE. It was small enough to fit on a floppy disk, and had modules for all the independant subsystems: CPU, RAM, VIDEO, IO Ports, Timer channels, interrupts, Hard disk... You could select all the tests and let it run all night. If it failed on something, it actually gave you an idea on what might be the problem.
I would recommend QAPLUS if they had an up-to-date version that booted from a CD and had it's own KNOWN GOOD drivers for hardware. A Plus would be some sort of modular technology that would allow you to add drivers for more hardware in the future.
Re:Sandra (Score:4, Informative)
Also, you can always make a bootable CD from a bootable floppy using most CD burning programs assuming you have one floppy drive somewhere that you could use for the transformation. Here's a good article [pcsupportadvisor.com] I found on doing this.
-Lucas
WHat?! (Score:5, Informative)
If you come to a computer that needs work and you boot into a Knoppix CD you get...a desktop. On the other hand if you boot on to something like the ultimate boot cd [ultimatebootcd.com] you get a nice menu broken down by category of things like "File system utilities", "Memory Tests", and "Hard drive cloning". I just don't see how Knoppix can compare to that. I'm willing to listen though, if you care to explain what makes it so great for this.
Obvious, but helpful: Manufacturers' HDD Diags. (Score:2, Informative)
It may seem too obvious to mention, but for ANY had drive issues, one of the first thigs I do is just use a bootable floppy with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools. Fujitsu, WD, Maxtor, they all have them and they have helped before. If the drive is failing, but still holding on, any bootable linux CD then goes in (Knoppix or Cool-Linux, ususally) and I copy the contents of the dying drive to a fresh one. Then the old one can continue its innevitable tranformation in to a paper weight.
Mr_Wood
Re:Not many PC maintenance people use any diagnost (Score:3, Informative)
If the diagnostic tool takes a few minutes to run, it generally is not as effective as my eyeball diagnostics of banging on the keyboard and testing out normal programs.
If the diagnostic tool is focused on specific tasks -- say memory or hard drive -- and it performs an exhaustive test, it will catch things I can't.
Case in point: I've found that 1/2 of my computers have had RAM defects; some right out of the box, and some toward the end of life.
Sometimes, I suspect that a specific problem exists and the tool verifies it. Other times, I test just to make sure the systems are OK, and get a surprise.
In either case, the tests should take hours. In one situation, I ran a burn-in test for over a day before any problems were detected.
Re:Sandra (Score:5, Informative)
It also uses some cygwin tools (dd, etc) to make it so that you can create a bootable CD by emulating the creation of a boot floppy via DD, so you can create one w/o the need for an actual floppy (I would recommend hacking it to create 2.88MB floppies rather than 1.44 MB floppies (need to search its config files to handle this)
Is one tool at a time OK? (Score:3, Informative)
robust, reputable, and Free (Score:5, Informative)
I suggest you make a Knoppix [knoppix.org] CD with LTP installed. With a little configuration, that will take care of all of all your tests for the memory, disk, IO, and CPU. You might want to install America's Army [americasarmy.com] or something to test the video subsystem.
If you put a little effort into it, you'll have a test suite as good as, and likely better than, anything you could pay money for. If you want to buy something, you can make a donation to the LTP and Knoppix projects.
There are also simpler tools, like Memtest86 [memtest86.com]. I find this tool to be invaluable when I try to salvage old hardwar. I can't begin to tell you how much time it's saved me that I would have spent aimlessly swapping components around.
Re:Sandra (Score:2, Informative)
Cerberus (Score:3, Informative)
Just... listen...... to the screams......
Take a different approach (Score:2, Informative)
This will obviously require you to lug someones hard-drive home to your "test" machine, but it may be easier looking for those kinds of software packages.
Good luck
Re:Sandra (Score:4, Informative)
[hard drive diag floppy] I just returned two Maxtor drives that passed multiple "extended" tests with their diag utils. BOTH have entire tracks that aren't readable -- sector mark not found... they aren't there anymore.
Just because it passed a limited set of tests doesn't mean it's not broken.
How to tshoot most PC's in 15 minutes or less (Score:4, Informative)
Prerequisites:
(1) GHOST'ed hard drive with Windows 2000 installed, and the Sysprep utility enabled on it
(4) Processors: a Socket 7, a Slot A, a Socket A, and a Socket 478
(4*2) RAM modules: a couple of 72 pin SIMM's, a couple of PC-66 SDRAM's, a couple of PC-133's, and a couple of DDR's
(3) Power supplies, an AT, an ATX, and one of those new ATX'es
(2) Motherboards, 1 AT, 1 ATX
(2) video cards, 1 PCI and 1 AGP
Step 1:
Replace user's HD with your SYSprep'd one. Boot. If you can boot, Win2K will do it's hardware detection routine. If it finishes, and boots to a 2K desktop, your problem is probably software and you have to narrow down from there. If it's using Windows, boot with user's hard drive in safe mode. If problem does not occur, disable taskbar lint under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Cur
Step 2:
If the user's machine did not go past the Win2K hardware detection routine, then the problem is hardware. Go into the PC's CMOS and reset to Setup Defaults. If that doesn't work, CMOS is OK, it's a hardware component. The list of problematic components in a typical PC, listed in desending order of probability is:
Go into the CMOS, disable L2 cache on the motherboard (common problem and you don't have to swap out anything). Try Win2K detection routine. If it works, motherboard L2 cache is the problem. If it doesn't, swap the ram. If it works, it's RAM. If it doesn't, swap the processor. If it works, it's chip. If it doesn't, swap the PSU. If it works, it's PSU. If it doesn't, take out all add-on cards and swap the video cards. If it works, swap back each add-on card one by one until the problem re-occurs. When it re-occurs, the last card you swapped back in was the problem. Replace it, and you are good to go.
Using this technique, I can troubleshoot 90% of PC's in 15 minutes or less, 90% of the time. HTH.
QuickTech from UXD (Score:3, Informative)
Our company swears by it... every machine before it goes on the bench and after it leaves goes through fully automated and comprehensive "Burn-In" process. I'm not sure how much it costs, but its definitely up there around $400 maybe? and comes with bunch of loopback interfaces.
it's pretty up to date too, last version we have has serial ATA, athlon 64 etc support
I can't even count how much time we saved when after initial burn-in we realized that the memory was set to CAS 2.5 instead of 3 causing timer problems and subsequent weird application crashes.
A tool like this is very important if you have many crap machines coming from the street and you dont know who worked on them before (Joe Sixpack thought that lower CAS will make his computer go faster, but his el cheapo memory modules just wont take it)
One thing sandra can't test is power (Score:2, Informative)
A word of advice for do-it-yourself-ers: You get what you pay for. If you want a stable system, shell out the cash for a good quality power supply (Antec makes some nice upper-end quality power supplies in the range of a budget, check out tomshardware.com).
Save your money... (Score:1, Informative)
The only software packages that i use when on site are ones such as partition magic, or R-studio (a verry good data recovery tool). If it looks like a hardware problem i just use the process of elimination, and can usualy find the cause in a few minutes. Invest your money in some known good hardware ( i.e. extra ram, video cards, hard disks, NIC's, and cables) and the process goes pretty fast. having the replacement hardware with you generaly impresses you clients as well becasue they get there issue resolved on your first trip out, and they tend not to mind if you charge a little extra for it.
just my
Re:Sandra (Score:4, Informative)
Free-standing Hardware Diagnostic Program (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How to tshoot most PC's in 15 minutes or less (Score:3, Informative)
Also, what's with the Windows 2000? It would probably take atleast 15 minutes for Windows 2000 to get done installing all the drivers and rebooting several times before you'd get to a desktop. And that's assuming Windows 2000 even has all the drivers for whatever hardware you are going to run accross.
Here's what I do -
General Windows flakyness/slowness:
Run adaware/antivirus, disable all the crap in the taskbar. See if it gets better. Try safe mode.
If not, reboot into Knoppix. If Knoppix detects and runs fine, it's probably a borked Windows install. But I'll try a few more steps before reinstalling Windows:
Like, try the CMOS. Put it on failsafe mode. Flash the Bios if it's really outdated.
If not that, open the computer and see what I got.
First, dust it out, and see if it's overheating or the fan(s) aren't working. Make sure all the connectors are snug. Jiggle stuff around. Inspect the ribbon cables.
If I have more than one stick of ram, try pulling all but one and swapping around. Try to yank out unnessecary expansion cards (usually all but video can go). Disconnect the CD drives, floppies, secondary hard drives.
Disable onboard sound/lan/USB/anything that isn't needed.
If not, get the parts bin. Try another stick of ram if I couldn't swap them out above. Try another power supply. Try another video card. Swap out the HDD ribbon cables.
If that doesn't work, try another motherboard. Swap out various random parts from here.
Re:SpinRite and Memtest (Score:3, Informative)