How to test your hardware for problems

To find problem in your hardware you need to test everything... But you need to think... I mean, if windows loads up it means that video card, hard disk, rams, and so on works... Possible case - they works not good as "good", but they still works.

Anyways..

Here is some list of programs and other tricks i found while searching internet how to test your hardware parts.

Ram ( Random Access Memory ):
To test your RAM, you can do just by checking your Task Manager ( Performance tab ). Also you can see how many rums installed by going to "my computer"'s properties.
In harder cases people recommend to download these programs:

• memtest86+ ( http://tinyurl.com/6dgkn46 ), requires to burn CD to run
• Windows Memory Diagnostic ( http://tinyurl.com/4qw9hr5 ), requires to burn CD to run
• memtest ( http://tinyurl.com/2lqo2 ), no burn requires!

Most of the information was fount on ehow.com

Hard Disk ( Hard Drive ):
Most of test which you can do for your hard drive is installed in windows. It called "checkdisk" or chkdsk.exe, you can run it from command line. In other case you can do that from your file explorer:

1. Go to computer, 
2. Select hard drive
3. Open properties
4. Choose tools tab
5. Press "Check Now" button, in "Error-checking" section
6. In showed up windows check all possible check boxes and press Start.
7. Wait until finishes and press Done. 

Also you can test your hard drive with SeaGate tool ( http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools ). 16,7 MB

Funny part of this, is that you can listen for sounds which hard drives are making ( in case if it is still working ), and check if it matches one of these ones: http://datacent.com/ . If it does,... i guess you need to change it.

More useful freewares such as "Hitachi Drive Fitness Test" or "Samsung HUTIL" and so on... can be fount here: http://pcsupport.about.com/

GPU ( Graphic Process Unit ):
First of all windows has included tool for this - dxdiag . You can run it from Command line.

1. Press Start 
2. Run 
3. Cmd.exe 
4. dxdiag 
5. hit Enter
6. check Dispay tab, for video card information.

Most popular method to test your video card is to install and run one of Benchmarks product 3DMark. http://www.futuremark.com/

Motherboard:
If motherboard is not working properly you will notice it. Some of these facts says about it:

• Computer does not boot, and instead gives beep sounds.
• Computer random crashes.
• Computer randomly reboots.

and so on..

One of great software to test motherboard is Hot CPU Tester.