Diagnosing Hardware Faults
When your computer goes wrong and you have lost all hope the normal practice is to reformat your computer. This will ultimately resolve any software issues, viruses or any other nasties and give your computer a fresh start. But what happens if you have reformatted your computer and the problem still exists?
This means you have a computer hardware fault. This is where the problems start.
Diagnosing a hardware fault can be a nightmare as any of the components could the culprit. Unless you are intending to replace the whole machine you need to carefully diagnose where the fault lies.
I would break the computer into these main areas to analyse.
Power Supply
This isn’t the full list, obviously depending on your computer issue ie if you just don’t get sound then it could be a sound card issue, likewise with graphics cards but if it is a random fault then either of the above could be the cause.
Memory – this is relatively easy to diagnose. Search Google for a memory tester. Generally these can be burnt onto a CD (or Floppy if you are still in the dark ages), booting from the CD then enters the memory test. This will persistently check the memory for errors. It is wise to leave this on for several hours or over night. It will alert you if the memory fails.
Power Supply – this is an interesting one. People assume that if the power supply does fail then you simply would get no life from you computer. This is actually not true. I have had computers that randomly turn off at any given time, computer that have the power light on, but do not boot etc and it has turned out to be the PSU – I would suggest looking at this as being one of the first problematic areas. Testing it can be annoying. Really the only way is to get a volt tester and check the voltage and current coming out..
Hard Disk – this is annoying as if you hard disk does go, unless you have been sensible and done a regular backup of your important data, you stand to lose everything. These can go at any time and generally you will hear a harsh sounding clicking noise coming from your computer. If this is the case you need to replace the hard disk. Get someone who then knows what they are doing to try and recover your old data for you.
If none of the above solves you issue then you are possibly looking at the motherboard or any other cards or devices you have. Strip everything down to the very basics. Remove all sound cards etc and any other PCI devices that are not essential. If you have more than one stick of ram then leave only one and see if the machine will boot.
Really is a case of trial and error here so take the time to test everything out. Bear in mind that even a faulty keyboard or mouse can cause very strange things to happen to a computer, so if you can, try every single item.
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