The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : The Ins and Outs of PC Diagnostic Programs
Personal computer diagnostic programs, which analyze why a PC isn’t running properly, must be real bears to create: By the time you’ve figured out all the possible hardware and software troubles that can sabotage a computer, there’s a whole new generation of hardware and software that needs to be examined.
And diagnostic programs can also be a real bear to use: Many PC owners will save themselves a lot of time and trouble by leaving technical problems to professional technicians. If you don’t enjoy tinkering, skip this column and take your machine to a good computer store if you want to upgrade or add accessories.
Still, reasonably adept computer users who like to do things themselves can get a lot of mileage out of diagnostic programs. I recently examined five such programs for DOS and Windows:
* PC911, about $25, and First Aid for Windows, about $45 (both from CyberMedia Inc. of Los Angeles, (800) 721-7824), are simple and useful, but are not full-featured diagnostic programs.
* WinSleuth Gold Plus 2.0, about $59 (from E Ware division of Visual Cybernetics of Cypress, Calif., (800) 892-9950), has some excellent features, but it also has some glitches, and it crashed one computer on which I tested it.
* WinCheckIt, about $50 (from TouchStone Software Corp. of Huntington Beach, Calif., (800) 531-0450), has the best user manual, explaining many important technical concepts in terms most people can understand.
* QAPlus/Win, about $60 (from DiagSoft Inc. of Scotts Valley, Calif., (800) 347-4763), allows you to send a program-generated trouble report via modem to DiagSoft’s technicians and get back their expert opinion on the solution. The program is not very good at helping you make your own diagnosis, however, unless you’re already an expert.
The single biggest cause of problems on most PCs is some kind of change in one of two cryptically named system definition files, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. Every time the computer is turned on or rebooted, it uses those files to set up devices like CD-ROM drives and sound cards and to execute programs that need to be running all the time, such as one that controls the mouse. Microsoft Windows has an even more complex set of initialization files such as WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI.
PC911, though limited in many respects, has a useful approach to dealing with problems in these files. When first installed, the program makes copies all critical files onto a “rescue” diskette that can be stored and used later if your computer fails to start properly. Then, every time you start the computer, PC911 checks the contents of the system definition files against copies it stores in its own database. If a file has changed and your system doesn’t run properly, you can use PC911 to restore a former version of the same file. (It keeps track of the most recent 50 versions.) The program can also be instructed to look for conflicting requirements by various components inside the computer, such as sound cards, scanner cards and network cards, all of which can get in each other’s way.
First Aid for Windows can be a companion program for PC911, or used alone. It contains a database of information about how Windows itself and popular Windows application programs should be configured. It will inspect the critical Windows .INI files and cite problems it finds. You can either make the suggested changes yourself or allow First Aid to do it for you.
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Additionally, First Aid can remain vigilant in background while other Windows programs are working and alert you if a problem occurs. If you send a document off to a printer but forgot to log onto the network where the printer resides, First Aid will notify you immediately.
The other three programs do complete diagnostics of a personal computer’s hardware components, including the central microprocessor (CPU), random access memory chips (RAM), hard and floppy disk drives, video card and monitor, sound card, CD-ROM drive, input-output ports to printers, modems and the mouse, and other components. All have some method of detecting internal signaling and memory-addressing conflicts among PC circuit boards, and all allow the major system files for both DOS and Windows to be edited. WinCheckIt has an excellent manual with good explanations of what the various tests mean and how to interpret their results. If you’re buying diagnostic software to help you add new components to the computer, such as a new video card or a CD-ROM, WinCheckIt is the best program.
WinCheckIt comes with a database of specifications of more than 150 accessory cards and modems. This enables you to compare product specs with the configuration of your computer and determine if a conflict will result and if so, whether it can be resolved. In other words, you can tell before you buy something whether it will fit. A second database does the same thing for more than 2,000 software programs, comparing hard disk storage, processing and graphics requirements.
WinSleuth Gold Plus 2.0 has a name that hints at the numerous versions this program has undergone since the original WinSleuth was introduced several years ago. Yet one unforgivable flaw has survived all those versions: Some system reports are too wide for the window allocated to display them and there is no way to scroll horizontally to view the hidden information.
Despite this problem, I was prepared to declare WinSleuth Gold Plus 2.0 the champ among this group because of two excellent features: its “smart” editors for Windows .INI files and the “Conflict Finder.”
That was before I loaded it onto an AST 90 megahertz Pentium computer equipped with ATI’s speedy Mach64 video board. WinSleuth Gold Plus 2.0 crashed the computer. E Ware’s technical support, which was easy to reach, said the problem was probably a fault of ATI’s video driver and said I should get the latest version and try again.
Well, that may be. But it’s a new machine and everything else runs just fine on it, including all of the competing diagnostic programs. So maybe E Ware ought to reconsider the design of their program.
Still, WinSleuth Gold Plus 2.0 has much to recommend it. The Conflict Finder is a great feature, much better than conflict resolution tests in the other two programs. It hides itself in memory, reboots the computer, and keeps track of the computer system resources demanded by each driver and program as the computer starts up. That’s the only way to really find conflicts. With the other programs, you have to do all of this manually and then hope you can read the resulting reports carefully enough to find the conflicts.
The smart editors for Windows .INI files are also first-rate, providing on-screen explanations of most of the technical mumbo jumbo in those files. Armed with the explanations, you understand what to change and what to leave alone. Considering that QAPlus/Win’s publisher, DiagSoft, has a fine reputation as publisher of professional diagnostics software used by repair technicians and manufacturers, its consumer-oriented program was a big disappointment. The manual provides little explanation of the technical details its tests unearth, and if you don’t already understand about things like DMA channels and IRQs, you won’t understand the test results. The program doesn’t run very well, and has an especially hard time scrolling through its on-screen reports.
One particularly poor feature is a graphic that purports to let you design a diagram of your computer’s memory chips so that the program can point out the location of the offending chip when a test finds a memory glitch. You’d have to be a real expert, or extremely lucky to end up with a useful diagram.
I didn’t test the Electronic Technical Support Center feature, which lets you send a program-generated test report to DiagSoft and retrieve a response from a service technician. It is an excellent idea, and probably makes this program a good bet for a system support technician in a small company.
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Business Computing welcomes your comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or message oreilly@latimes.com on the Internet.
