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Suite to test for cause of slow-down?


Bojanglez
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hey guys, i have a pal that's driving me NUTS with his home PC issues, and I'm about out of ideas, and thought someone here might have a suggestion

he's been complaining about his PC (don't have exact specs but it's a 3.4 HT, 2gb RAM, X800/256mb) for a while now, saying it keeps slowing down and is choppy/lagging but he's really non-technical so i've been blowing him off as a nub. However, this last weekend I reinstalled Windows for him (the machine was a mess) but the problem is still there.

went over there after work last night and he's right, the machine periodically just slows down (like, every 45 seconds or something) - he's a big gamer and it's most noticable when playing games - he played vanguard and the fps fluctuated from 25 down to 3 while standing in an empty spot - roughly the same in SWG - went into WoW, same thing, from 60 down to like 10 or so periodically but regularly.

even though it's a fresh install, i checked the task manager to make sure there were no processes running or anything else like anti-virus that would explain it, but there isn't - it feels like something in the machine on a hardware level keeps stuttering or jerking, but i can't figure out what.

so I ran 3dMark06 and the machine got what I consider to be pissy, weak scores - 1630 and although i don't have my figures handly, last time I tested my machine (which is a similar spec) i got like 3000+ on the same tests, but am really baffled as to what could be causing this

SO - what i'm looking for is a suite of diagnostics that run on a hardware level that might actually give me an indikcation of what's going wrong here - i ran a few tests last night to check CPU & RAM, but all the tests I'm using run in isolation so they can tell me (for example) that the proc and the RAM are fine, but it doesn't tell me if they're working well together - does anyone know of a suite of hardware diags that not only test hardware effectively, but are also good at reporting issues?

my next step would be to remove my CPU, RAM & card and take them to his house and put them in his machine one at a time as "known good hardware" but man, if i could find some tests that would indicate the problem before taking apart two machines and getting into swapping parts out, installing, updating/patching and testing, i'd be a very happy man!

like Homer S. says: "this is why you should never help ANYONE [with their home PC]"

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