Firstly you can test Harddrives with programs like Seatools for seagate Harddrives (every vendor has their own tool) but windows also has a build-in tool to check your HDD for filesystem and physical errors called chkdsk. You run it through the command line (cmd) with administrator rights and the command for a full error checking run should look like this:
chkdsk c: /f /r
if C is the drive you want to test - /f means it'll test the file system /r means it'll scan and (temporarily at best) repair some physical hard drive defects. This is primarily meant for HDDs, tho, not sure, how useful that is for an SSD.
You'll also want to have a tool that can read a drives SMART values (A drives own self test feature) like Crystaldiskinfo (altho the vendor tools are preferable because SMART values aren't standardised across the industry and can mean different things for different hard drives).
Another absolutely vital one would be Memtest86 - you put it on a bootable CD or USB-stick and that'll thoroughly check your system for RAM errors. Let it run over night and having 8 passes should be good enough to determine if your RAM is good or not.
For GPUs you have furmark or MSI kombustor which will scan for artifacts which can stem from too highly overclocked memory.
To check if your CPU is healthy (or if your overclock is stable) you can use tools like Intel Burn test or Realbench (which will also test your GPU) but to really figure out if your overclocks (on your CPU and GPU) are stable you should just play a few games for more than an hour while measuring GPU and CPU temps with something like HWiNFO64. If your PC doesn't overheat, bluescreen and/or non of your games crash when you play them for 2-3hrs, you're golden.
To test the operating system for integrity errors there would be the command
sfc /scannow
again, from the command line with administrative rights.
That should be about it. Hope that gives you few pointers.
Edit: Right, almost forgot the Windows 10 "reliability monitor" (just type it into the Windows 10 search bar to open it) - it'll show you a list of failures with error codes which you can google for more info. And if you get a lot of bluescreens "Bluescreenview" can be pretty useful to check errorcodes. Checking error codes should actually be the first thing you do - it'll often give you a hint about what might be broken and which of the above mentioned tools might be relevant.
Nothing simple. But you can read up and learn what symptoms mean what. And there are tools to check up on those symptoms. Not unlike mechanic checks on car, or doctor your health.
Indeed, Device Manger will not be able to detect a device if it is not physically and electrically attached to the system.
However, any attached devices will always show up in Device Manager, regardless of the driver status. And there were a driver issue, an error message will show up. Like this:
(Left to right: driver not installed, normal, modified ME firmware & driver)
They easiest way is to look at Device Manager if you can boot into Windows. Any device not showing up or has an extra symbol might be a problem.
Run a stress test in AIDA64, 3DMark, etc., to see if you have any abnormal temperatures or unexpected failures.
DO NOT trust those online "fix your computer" program, those are usually bloat or scam.
PlzGivMonej reacted to Hans Power in Problem hardware scan
