Hardware troubleshooting is something you learn with experience. If you can
not boot into the operating system then software will not help you anyhow
unless you have a floppy or cdrom based bootable program. There are "post"
cards that can help troubleshoot hardware problems as shown in the link
below. You can't troubleshoot a dead motherboard with much since it is dead
and nothing will work. In my experience most hardware problems boil down to
an overheating cpu, bad memory, bad/flaky power supply, loose pci/agp cards,
loose cables including power and data, or bad hard drives. Always have a
generic pci video card around like a Matrox Millennium to see if the video
card is bad. A computer should post [usually that one beep at bootup] with
at least cpu/memory/video card which is where I usually start at if I can
not quickly determine the hardware problem and then I start reattaching
cables and devices from there.
http://www.protechdiagnostics.com/flippostplus.htm
There are some general info and diagnostic programs such as Everest Home.
http://www.lavalys.com/news.php?article=21&selcat=PN&lang=en
Software problems can be much more difficult to analyze and require basic
knowledge of the operating system. Problems can be misconfiguration,
registry corruption, corrupt files, missing files, conflicting
software/drivers, virus or spyware problems. Booting into safemode and using
msconfig can usually help there. Often uninstalling and reinstalling a
program will fix it. AdAware SE should be part of any pc repair toolkit to
check for parasites. Often the best solution is to reinstall the operating
system AFTER backing a users data files.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310353 -- how to
perform clean boots.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;192926
http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm Regseeker registry tool
I also suggest you post in the A+ certification newsgroup and buying Scott
Mueller's pc troubleshooting book.. --- Steve
