We Don't Need No Stinkin' Hardware Diagnostics

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Posted by KimmieJ in Software at 11:30 | Tuesday, August 21. 2007

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My coworker and I decided to perform an experiment. For six weeks we called computer repair shops across the US and Canada and asked them what features they would like to see in hardware diagnostic tools. We received a wide range of feedback from you guys. Some used words not appropriate for this blog, one guy invited me to be a guest speaker on his radio show and several of you used the phone call as a forum to vent about some man in Redmond, Washington. The majority of the technicians we contacted did have questions--the same three questions, actually.

1. "Why Would I Need Hardware Diagnostic Tools? I've Been Fixing Computers for Twenty Years!"

I heard this statement a lot. It was often followed by a grumble, or perhaps a dial tone. The answer may not be obvious, but understanding the value of hardware diagnostics will save a technician time, money, and frustration. As we all know, operating systems are more complex than they used to be. Determining whether an issue is an actual hardware problem or a software problem has become increasingly difficult. For example, a system can have random blue-screens in Windows and yet the dump file doesn't have any specific information as to the problem. Is it hardware or is it a software problem? In one particular case, a portion of the memory was bad and had not been detected in the Windows OS because the OS was masking the problem. It was only when DOS diagnostics were run to completely verify the system that the faulty memory location was identified. Twenty years of experience in fixing computers could never identify this problem!

2. "I'm already using free tools I downloaded off the web, or some other product. Why should I pay for yours?"

Because I said so. Really, there are lots of reasons. I'll explain a few.

Simply put, we are the market leader. No other diagnostic company ships more diagnostic licenses than PC-Doctor. We ship more than 1 million licenses per month and, according to a recent report, own more than 50% market share. Our Service Center product is based on the same software that the worldÃ¢Â?Â?s largest OEMs ship on more than a million PCs every month. That means we create builds every day that big companies like IBM, HP, Lenovo, Fujitsu and others use in manufacturing, support and service environments. Hence, we are able to refresh ourService Center product with the most up-to-date, reliable diagnostics. For example, we have supported the Vista OS since its release. No other diagnostic product/company has announced native support forVista.

We are more economical. Leaving accuracy and currency aside, products that compete with Service Center cost anywhere from $200 to $800 more.

We are more accurate. We test on dozens of systems and against scores of leading components from the world's leading PC manufacturers and component manufacturers before their products are released to our customers. We have a large QA (Quality Assurance) lab with more than 100 systems. Additionally, through our CHV (Certified Hardware Vendor) program, we work directly with the major component manufacturers to assure diagnostic accuracy for their devices.

That brings up another point:. "Wait, then how are your products better than the diagnostics I currently get from OEMs?"

While OEMs write diagnostics specifically for their hardware components, they are not able to effectively write diagnostics for all hardware components. We have acquired vast experience through working with numerous OEMs and component vendors. That gives us a better overall hardware diagnostic vision.<

"What could be wrong with free diagnostics offered on the web?"

Besides legal implications that have been occurring lately, you do not know the expertise of the person or people writing these. It's just risky.

3. "Most of our issues are software related. How can we justify the cost of hardware diagnostics?"
To quickly and easily determine if you have a hardware problem. I'll give you an example. A large test instrument manufacturer had a problem which the software engineers were saying was a hardware issue. They were able to run PC-Doctor diagnostics for a couple of hours on burn-in and everything passed. They went back to the software engineer and said the hardware passed. The engineer, knowing how accurate and reliable PC-Doctor diagnostics are, was receptive and found the problem with their code. You will probably save the entire cost of the software the first time you quickly run our diagnostics and prove it's not a hardware issue.

With that said, we learned a lot from you guys during this experiment and welcome your feedback regarding new features and functionality.

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hardware techs dont need software because they dont deal with software. they do component level work where a multimeter and know how to decide the problem. pcdoctor will help diag memory and defective hard drives only, thats all its good for. you can try and say otherwise but all the other tests are not usefull at all. especially when doing component level work, thats why tech repair compainies dont need your expensive software that doesnt do anything for them that something free can do just aswell (those two tests).

#1 5353kasmmm on 2007-10-31 06:33

I'm sorry to hear you haven't had a good experience with diagnostics, 5353kasmmm. We get a lot of feedback from big PC makers like IBM, HP and others, but also value your opinion. What would you like to see done to make diagnostics better?

#2 danr (Homepage) on 2007-10-31 11:26

im just saying that even tho pc makers give feedback, its not going to help any hardware repair facility fix computers other than finding out if the hard drive or memory is defective.

i have not used the newest version of pc doctor, but something to test GPU and GPU memory would be usefull. most cases you can tell by the video output if there is cold solder on the bga of the gpu or video memory, but there are some cases where it is not apparent when a tech is working on the unit. there really are no fast tests to tests these systems for issues that normaly show up in windows only. the pc doctor 3 tests dont test for these (if they did, its poor).

annother thing... how about the sound doesnt work on the unit. well how is pc doctor going to tell the tech what is wrong with the motherboard to replace the component on it. is it the codec chip, the amplifier chip or a loose connectionn at the audio jack.

pc doctor wont test the functions of the southbridge or northbridge or memory controler on cpus(amd cpus). often times thats an issue and a major one.

pc doctor wont test for cold solder on memory sockets, but will call the memory defective regardless how many times its swapped out.

my sATA drive wont work - does pc doctor test the sata controler on the motherboard? i know it tests a controler on the actuall hard drive.

im trying not to get more technical. but what does pc doctor have to offer other than what an oem recomends? most of this stuff about repairing computers is all in the brain, we dont need software to tell us these issues, because it just cant for the most part. if a network chip doesnt work, i diag all those components, i just look at windows to see if its connecting, i dont need pc doctor to tell me its connecting or not, and if its not, somethings obviously bad - so why do i need a peice of software to tell me that?

what im saying is this article is correct, pc repair places dont need to use pc doctor. pc doctor has a good memory and hard drive scanning application - tho there are others that are free and just as good (gwscan is far better, it repairs drives, memtest is not bad, but its a very long process and its not the greatest for systems running with shared memory (differnt types of memory for gpu etc, where pcdoctor excels).

not to mention that not only are these tests not usefull for pc repair facilities, but they are expensive and you need to use USB devices that often systems come in with broken usb devices or southbridge issues where the usb's dont work. not to mention there are often 50 or more tech's at repair faciliites repairing units, who wants 50 usb devices that are not always going to use.

pc doctor needs to re-evaluate there procedure to get more sales. all i hear is marketing talk which is not going to persaide a tech to buy your software.

#3 5353kasmmm on 2007-11-01 09:38

Thanks very much for the follow-up and insightful comments, 5353kasmmm. From the sounds of things, you sound like a very experienced tech. So it might well be that PC-Doctor isn't likely to help you in your work and chosen approach.

In our experience, though, our customers are techs who rely on highly accurate diags to solve problems like the complex ones that you pose. For example, the software is a very efficient way of finding intermittent issues that cannot be easily found using other methods. Or, a tech might know that something isn't working right, but before they swap in a hero kit they use the software to make sure that the component is truly bad and that it's not some other issue (drivers come to mind here). Or, the software can help a less experienced tech find errors without the specialized knowledge that you have. Or, sometimes it's just plain faster than diagnosing by hand.

The point being that there is no one right way for things to get done. Your approach works because of the time and experience invested, and that's an awesome thing.

Thanks again for the insightful comments!

#4 danr (Homepage) on 2007-11-05 18:05

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