How to test if your computers hardware is at fault

Do you want the good news or the bad news? It doesn’t matter since they are one in the same. More than 98% of all support calls end up being something other than hardware failures. Your computer can run imperfect files and settings perfectly and still give disappointing results. This has nothing to do with your hardware. Think of it as watching a TV show that doesn’t live up to your expectations. The TV is functioning perfectly, the programming itself has failed you. This is both good and bad news for your computer. Good, because you know that all you have to do is wipe your drive and start over and your computer will run like new. Bad, because you have to wipe your computer and start over before your computer will run like new again.

How can you assure yourself it is one or the other? If you followed our Computer Speed Up page when you first received your new M-Tech computer, your worries are reduced, since after tweaking your computer you were encouraged to create a Windows System Image. If you restore to your image, within two minutes your C drive is wiped and restored with all your settings and programs ready to run.  As long as you went with your technical advisers' standard suggestion of at least two drives, then part of the tweaks was to move your User Library from the C drive to the D drive. So the restoration won’t affect your data, only the corrupt or bloated C drive.

What if you didn’t follow the recommendations and now have no easy way to restore, but would like to avoid it if the issue is failing hardware.  The following is a post from a support email that walks you thru the steps to test everything that could lead to bad computer behavior if the hardware is to blame. Let’s not candy coat this though.  Should the hardware test fine and you now are left with a host of issues that reside on your drive that can cause poor computer performance, then there is no pill you can take or wand you can waive. Forget about software that promises to fix the issues. They are at best, band-aids. The real and only solution is to start backing up data (if you only have one drive) and then setup your computer from the ground up again.   Once you’ve done this, go to the Computer Speed Up page under the Tips and Tricks category of the M-Tech Laptops web page and your troubles will be few and short-lived.

Now you will need to move on to the testing of the hardware. 

Good afternoon,

We are going to be testing the computer under load to determine its baseline temperature. Your computer’s model has an average temperature of 40-60 Celsius at idle/light load, and 83-91 Celsius under full load. The temperature should not be getting over 95.

To determine the temperature, we are going to run a stress test on the system. First, we need to download this program:

LinX stress test ( linx.en.lo4d.com )

And we will also need to download HWmonitor:

HWMonitor (www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html)

You will run LinX to stress the CPU and RAM. This test will show any potential errors that could possibly come up with the CPU and RAM. You will run HWmonitor at the same time to show the temperatures of the CPU while it is being stressed.

First please close all programs that you may have open. After everything is closed, please open HWMonitor first (after it has been installed), then LinX second. As you can see in the HWmonitor window, there is a temperature monitor that monitors the CPU cores. You will be keeping an eye on this as LinX is running. Once you have HWmonitor open, please open LinX and click "start test” to run the stress test.

If you notice that LinX is picking up errors while it is running, this is indicative of a bad CPU or a bad stick of RAM. If you notice HWmonitor monitoring temperatures over 92 or 93 degrees, then we may have to discuss having the computer serviced. If the computer does need to be serviced, we will definitely need the serial number starting with PS (or if I can possibly find your record with first/last name).

Give this test a shot and let me know how it goes. LinX generally takes a little while to run, however, HWMonitor is instant and constantly refreshes so you can see the temperatures fluctuate in real-time.

Thank you for your time,

-John B.