My computer [censored] up on occasion, and some dude on a mailing list said I might have a faulty hard drive, bad ram, somethin weird...how do I test all this [censored] to find out what's messed up?

I don't know anything about computers..

lol I am sorry but I find that funny. One of the easiest ways to check is get a hold of some known good hardware and replace it to see if that fixes the problem. You could take it to a decent computer shop and have them test it for you.

Get some diagnostic software, upgrade your firmware/BIOS to something that allows you to run diagnostics. Boot into BIOS and look around and see what is available to you.

Okay well what kinda diagnostic software and where do I get it?

who manufactures your hard drive, ram, mother board?

Also have you tryed reseating the connections? Try pulling ram out and reseating it. Disconnect the IDE cable and replace it. This will a lot of times fix issues.

I had an issue once where I would lose RAM. I pulled it out and re-seated the card and it was fine. I gues I bumped the box and un seated it just enough. Ribbon cables are very cheap, so this is a quick check.

Maxtor makes very nice hard drive utility software. But this is usally for thier drives

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuit...0Downloads&downloadID=113

figure out who made your I will see what I can find. There is also the Ultimate Boot disk...

http://www.startdisk.com/Web1/ubd/ubd.htm
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/


Try a google search on some of these

Drive Fitness Test (IBM/Hitachi) 4.02
PowerMax (Maxtor/Quantum) 4.09/4.21
SCSIMax (Maxtor) 2.1
DLG Diagnostic (Western Digital) 4.15/5.04c
Data Lifeguard (Western Digital) 11.0
SeaTools Desktop (Seagate) 1.06.02/3.00.07en
Diagnostic Tool (Fujitsu) 6.20
SHDIAG (Samsung) 1.25
HUTIL (Samsung) 1.19
GWSCAN (Gateway) 3.15
GWSCAN (Gateway) 5.09
Salvation HDD Scan and Repair 3.0
MHDD32

hey Pergesu... This is what you want man


http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/