• GPF's, hangs, program crashes, corrupted disks...check your RAM.

• Noise or vibration when your PC is reading or writing data...check your hard disk.

• Delays, pauses, "data error" messages...check your hard disk.

• Corrupted file system...check your file system (gee!).

• Image distortion...check your video card or monitor cable.

• Inaccurate display color...check your video adapter.

• Faulty data transmission via modem...check your modem or your COM port.

Yeah, but what does all this mean? And how do I check this stuff? Keep reading.

RAM. Your PC's RAM (Random Access Memory) is involved in almost every aspect of your computer's function. Undetected RAM failures cause a wide variety of problems, some of which excel at masquerading as faults of almost any system component. Worse, some RAM failures are intermittent, so the symptoms come and go. If you experience lots of GPF's (general protection failures), your system hangs frequently, your apps crash (freeze) repeatedly, or your data repeatedly and inexplicably becomes corrupt, your RAM may be at fault. Win 95 has a barebones RAM tester built into HIMEM.SYS, which tests your RAM every time you start the computer, but this won't catch any but the most flagrant of RAM faults. One excellent program to test and evaluate your RAM is American Megatrend's AMIDiag. Damaged RAM is irreparable; you must replace the RAM module if your RAM goes south. PC's with single RAM modules are no problem for even a relative novice with a screwdriver to replace, but multiple RAM modules require a "hunt and test" methodology - replace one and try the machine. Multiple modules will sometimes confuse diagnostic programs as to which module is defective, so you're left to test one after another on your own...assuming you don't just cart the whole thing to Puters'R'Us and let them handle it.

Hard disks. They tend to fail dramatically, with lots of noise and vibration. The read/write heads may not be floating serenely over the surface of your disk, but rather may be digging trenches into the disk's surface. Or the bearings that support the platter's spindle may be failing. Since a hard disk spins at up to 10,000 rpm, it doesn't take long for a bad bearing to turn your disk into metal shavings. Or maybe your drive doesn't sport such a dramatic failure, maybe it's just pausing for rest periods too often. Occasional pauses are ok - cache flushes, accessing of swap files, etc. - but too many pauses mean your PC is having trouble retrieving stored data. Your disk's surface may be flawed, the heads may be inaccurately positioned, the electronics may have glitches, or the connections may be loose or defective. Hard disks have a neat trick that sometimes makes it more difficult to diagnose a problem: they use multiple layers of error correction code to rewrite bad data. If your hard disk is doing this, you won't know it, and consequently you won't know when your disk has a problem that's causing it to recreate the bad data. It will do this until it overloads, then you'll see the message "Data error on drive C:" and shortly thereafter your data goes ka-whoosh. ScanDisk will find some of the problems causing this, but not all of them; its worst limitation is that it will allow the hard disk to perform retries and error corrections without telling you, and if a sector is faulty but still readable using these techniques, it will "pass" it and go on. SpinRite, a hard disk diagnostic and repair utility from Gibson Research, is an old warhorse utility which is still considered an industry standard; it performs a much more thorough diagnosis on your hard disk than ScanDisk is capable of performing, and will even move data from a damaged sector to a whole sector. (It's been updated to version 6, and is well worth the purchase.) Note on advancing technology: Floppy disks are already being superseded by "superfloppies," various ZIP-type drives, SuperDisks, and so forth. CD-ROM drives are being lapped by DVD, CD-RW, and other newbie's, but the venerable IBM Winchester hard disk will carry on for the foreseeable future. PCs made after the millennium will likely store over 10 gigs of data on their inboard hard disks.

File systems. Win 9x still uses the old DOS file system, made up of the directory hierarchy and the file allocation table (FAT). A file's entry in the hierarchy can be accidentally overwritten, causing mild to major trauma to your file system. If the FAT is corrupted, your file structure may become scrambled, making your system unusable. Worse, file system errors reproduce like rabbits. ScanDisk can detect many file system errors, and repair them if they aren't too widespread. Unfortunately, if the errors are too big, ScanDisk's attempts at repair can be worse than the errors themselves. Norton's Disk Doctor, or a similar utility, does a better and more complete job of file rebuilding and repair.

Diagnostic Utilities Worth Having
Hardware Info Utility (you already have this one: go through Start, Run, type HWINFO.EXE/UI and press Enter.
SiSoft Sandra Standard (free)
Startup Control Panel 2.8 (free)
DLL Checker
AMIDiag 2.0 from American Megatrends
CheckIt 7 from Smith Micro, $69.95
McAfee First Aid Deluxe from Network Associates (formerly Cybermedia; this utility has now been superseded by more recent apps)
Norton Utilities from Symantec
SpinRite from Gibson Research

Of course none of these manufacturers have asked me to plug them or their products. They have no idea who I am and probably don't want to know. These are the utilities consistently recommended by the experts from the computer press at this writing. Many of these utility programs have competitors on the market that are almost as good, and perhaps by the time this is posted, one or more will have eclipsed a program on the list. I provide this list as a handy-dandy guide to what you ought to have in your arsenal to combat computer failure, not because Symantec or Touchstone wrote me a check. As programs change, this list will change. Certainly you should not use this list as a be-all end-all guide; rather, use it as a starting point. Other packages new on the market are worth consideration.

In fact, diagnostic programs in general tend to fail miserably at their jobs. Reviews in several leading PC magazines found every program lacking. The most well-known, Norton Diagnostics/WinDoctor, is described by one source as a "complete clunker," and that program's probably the best of the lot. Note: WinDoctor has a known compatibility problem with MS Office 2000.

There are also a lot of Websites out there which provide diagnostic and "tune-up" functions for your PC. Some of these Websites are listed below:

Quarterdeck's TuneUp at www.tuneup.com/
PCTuneUp at www.pctusa.com/main.html
System Information Optimization at www.sysopt.com/
WebNovice's PC TuneUp at www.uscities.com/webnovice/quickpc.htm

Win 9x has the ability to create a "bootlog," a text file of the entire boot process. If you're having problems with startups, reboot Windows in Logged mode: restart the computer and when you see the words "Starting Windows 95" appear, hit F8, and the Startup menu will appear. (In Win 98, hold down the Ctrl key from the beginning of the boot process until the menu comes up.) At the menu, select the option for Logged (BOOTLOG.TXT) and continue with the boot. Of course, your PC is persnickety and will boot flawlessly, just to tee you off. Keep doing this until it fouls up, then restart the computer again normally. Go through Start/Run and type C:\BOOTLOG.TXT. Press Enter. You'll be able to read the boot log and hopefully figure out what the problem is. Can't access Windows? At the C: prompt, type C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EDIT C:\BOOTLOG.TXT and press Enter. The text file will be long and confusing, but just skip down to the end. You'll see the words "LoadFail" or "failure," and that should identify the problem. What you do from here depends on your level of technical skill...you may well want to print, or copy, the bootlog and yell for skilled help.

 

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