Stability Tests

[GuilleX]

Hi chaps, how's everyone doin'?

I have a little sample of 10 computers from one of my clients - a school - that are old and have been reported a lot of times for being inconsistent; you know, the usual: doesn't boot, hangs up, etc

All i really do on my workbench usually is memtest+, HDDregenerator, and if i can get to boot windows sometimes IntelBurnInTest if the computer applies for it (these ones don't, its a Lubuntu env).
I was looking to test them a little more extensively, but i don't know many of the tools present on UBCD or HBCD, and i figured that some of you guys could give some recommendations to test the stability of these systems.

I like QuickTechPro, but i'm not entirely sure if i can draw conclusions from this test only. How do you test?

Thank you

 

[shamrin]

Take a look as www.passmark.org, their performance test and burn-in test are pretty good for judging stability. I also like Prime95 from http://www.mersenne.org/ to test general stability including CPU and RAM.

 

[scandalist]

Connect them to the internet and use them like a normal person would. If there are indeed hangups be it software or hardware they will become apparent quickly and you can drill the problem down to a more specific component

Running diagnostic software is costly to your time and there isnt a whole lot of sense in running a sector by sector hard drive integrity test when the problem might be software related in the first place.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Well in my experience theres no more accurate stability test than prime95 but it takes forever. I'd say about 13 hours or so is a good run time to be almost certain of stability. I dont have any suggestions on faster stability testing.

 

[cypress]

If you are also going to be testing graphics, maybe try 3D Mark 11

 

[mrapoc]

Occt is a good suite. Include PSU CPU and GPU testing

 

[JARISOCS]

Take a look as passmark, their performance test and burn-in test are pretty good for judging stability. I also like Prime95 from ****** to test general stability including CPU and RAM.

I've used both Passmark products. You can also buy adapters that test the ports and media to test the optical drives but it's probably just a waste since you can test those easy enough for free. They also let you set the intensity and time of the test, and the configuration is very straight forward. A job I had in the past required 3 successful 15 minute Burn-ins to pass the computers off as OK. I can't tell you how accurate those tests were because after our tests those computers were given away.