Dave,

I use BARTPE and put all the tools you want on it, cost is free.

I also installed BartPE on a 4GB USB drive, works great.

Just Google BartPE, then add the tools you need as you go.

You probably want 

AntiVirus
Spyware removal
Registry edit and cleaner

any other tools you deem necessary

I also have a bootable USB drive that does a memory test, I think it is only 128mb.

-Craig


----- Original Message ----
From: "Dave Powell, MMfab" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 6:12:42 PM
Subject: OT: PC hardware diagnostics

Anybody have any experience / recommendations?  I'm looking for hardware
tests that can be run from a bootable CD, completely bypassing Windows.   I've
done some searches and found a few products that claim to be perfect in every
way, but they don't give enough specifics to tell me how close they are to
what I want.

My ideal diagnostics would be much like the CD Dell ships with their Optiplex
machines, but I want to buy other brands which sadly come with lame
diagnostics, or none at all.  And the Dell CDs don't like to run on other
brands.  Dell's CD offers nice choices full system tests or a menu of
individual tests, choice of quick or long flavors of most tests, etc, etc.

PS:  the bit about bypassing Windows is a big deal for me.  Just recently
Windows on a month-old Dell decided to boot into BSOD with a pretty useless
error message, but the Dell bootable CD ran just fine and reported memory &
cache errors and it was easy to get Dell to replace the parts.  Without that
CD I might have gone on a Windows reinstall wild goose chase.  Either that or
I'd still be on the phone with Dell support.

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