Someone who has some experience with "Burn In" tools should tell us a good free program for doing this.

Here's an example of a payware one:
http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm

What BurnInTest does is thoroughly exercise the hardware in a PC in a short period of time, in the same way as normal applications use a PC over a long period of time. This takes advantage of the fact that computer hardware tends to fail either very early in its life or after many thousands of hours of use. Typically BurnInTest should be used before a PC is put into service, as the failure of a computer that isn’t being used for a critical application and doesn’t have any critical data is much less damaging, (especially if it is still under warranty).

BurnInTest will bring intermittent or hidden problems to the surface so that after a successfully run the computer can be used with a much higher level of confidence. BurnInTest can also be used by overclockers to verify system stability at high clock speeds.

BurnInTest tests the CPU, hard drives, RAM, CD-ROMs, CD burners, DVDs, sound cards, 2D graphics, 3D graphic, network connection, etc.

I can't say for sure but I'm assuming it's not too good an idea to stress test an ssd. I say that simply because I've read that defragging them isn't a good idea (or even necessary), so stressing them like a normal drive probably isn't good either. But, I certainly don't know for sure.

I'll run the diagnostic tools and that will be enough for my curiousity.

Maybe if I start a bit of overclocking I'll do some relevant stress tests.




Shades, I've definitely gone beyond the the leap of faith stage. As mentioned before, the data is the important bit for me. I'm going to concentrate on that - the machine will work until it doesn't.

I don't think the problem is that we don't know what diagnostics are (I've used software tools in the past, even though it may sound like I've never heard of such things). I'm not really bothered about eliminating the problem, I just wanted the machine to install Windows and work after that, which it is now doing.

My personal tone in this thread is to simply bitch and make a fuss, to moan about the store and blame someone other than myself for spending eight hours trying to install Windows.

If I really, really, wanted to know if the hardware was at fault I would run some checks immediately. I haven't and probably never will - not unless I detect some odd behaviour on the machine first.

You mentioned already that I've ignored the comments that provided good advice and that's true. But for me, this thread is just to let of steam and try and see who agrees and, at a push, maybe find someone that provides an instant 100% guaranteed solution to the original problem - which I thought I'd found when I discovered there was a "special" sata cable that had to be used.

Right now, I'm sticking with the "don't try and fix what isn't broken" method of computing. (I guess you can expect to see a fresh thread started by me in a week or two when I repeat all my complaints all over again because the machine has died.)

@nudone - I feel ya man - venting thread - been there after a lightening strike myself.

@westom - You really need to take into consideration that there is a lot of specialization in IT. Your skillset corner of the world is not the same as everybody elses. Soften your tone a bit and you'll get much better responses.

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That being said, I do have to agree that in this type of situation the best usage of $100 going forward is to hand it to an electrician to investigate how well ones dwelling is actually grounded. I did my own investigating back when (because I can), and did find a few things what needed attention.

Good point, JavaJones. I'd not even thought about warranties; which also means I feel the same way as you. I'd prefer to just get on with using the machine and let it die naturally rather than start hitting it with a stick to see if there's something wrong.

More importantly, the 30" monitor has arrived and it's amazing. A dream come true. I've wanted one for years.

It's a HP ZR30W S-IPS

I saw the review in PC Pro magazine http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/monitors/361456/hp-zr30w/specifications last week and thought I'd just bite the bullet. The price seemed right and the overall opinions online by other reviewers are positive.

I bought an ex-demo model which cost £799.67 (full price is usually between £1000 - £1300 online). The screen has a two years warranty and has no defects.

At the moment, I'm still getting used to it. I'll be calibrating it a few times yet. All the reviews mention the vivid colours which need to be muted a bit but otherwise it's very, very good.

I'm used to sitting in front of a 24" EIZO monitor during the day, and in the evening in front of a budget priced Samsung 24" screen. The difference between them being so dramatic that I think the Samsung model should never have been allowed to go on sale (nor any other monitors that are genuninely painful to look at - they need a health warning attached).

Because I'm used to seeing the differences in quality between the two monitors, I did wonder if the new HP 30" would be impressively large but awful to stare at (the EIZO 30" is well over £2000 so I wondered if there was going to be a similar quality difference between low and high priced products).

Thankfully, the HP screen is perfect. Right now, it appears even better than my old EIZO monitor. The complete area of the screen appears very consistent in colour, brightness and contrast (I noticed very faint vertical bands on the EIZO but that might have been its age showing). The definition or sharpness is also consistent - I was worried about this as the cheap Samsung 24" I mentioned has areas on the screen that are very slightly "blurred" which I think causes eye strain when reading text (no surprise).

I'm pleased with the screen, almost ecstatic perhaps, as it didn't turn out to be a total waste of time - if it had been blurred or had any other slightly annoying feature about it I would be getting rid of it instantly.

OT:

It's a HP ZR30W S-IPS

Ah, I got 2 ZR24W S-IPS screens (the smaller brother of the ZR30W) with my new system (connected through display-port (DP)) this week, and I'm just as enthusiastic about it as you are , coming from 19" 4:3 HP and 22" 16:10 Dell (dull?) monitors (they're all standing side by side for now and my desk is really crowded ).
It absorbed most of the budget for my new system (i7-2600, 16 GB, 80 GB SSD, 1TB HDD), but we have great discounts with HP, so it was 'doable' (meaning: the budget request was eventually accepted by management)

These screens are really good, so awfully beautiful to look at!

Right now, it appears even better than my old EIZO monitor.

That's the age of the EIZO showing, as you already found out. We'll just have to see how long these screens keep their good image quality, but I guess next round of PC updates I'll be sticking to these 2 babies

When hard drives are not recognized during boot can mean several things. The first thing I try is to disable fast boot in the BIOS. Servers that I build always have this option disabled.

The next part is mainly about mechanical drives, but the concept behind it could be worth checking out.
Sometimes the BIOS isn't giving the hard disk enough time to spin up sufficiently and according to the BIOS it isn't there, while you do hear it spin. When booting the system for the second time the BIOS does recognize the drive and will go on to do its business.

Why a drive doesn't spin up sufficiently in the allotted time can be a lot of things, like a worn drive or power supply that is not supplying sufficient power to the drive (which happens the most in my situation over here).

Normally, a power supply has two 'rails' that supply +12volt, +5volt and GND with a certain amperage. What sometimes helps (again, in my situation over here in Paraguay) is switching one rail with the other.

if you have to settle for a replacement, i'd insist on a replacement of both motherboard and ssd.  and if they really want to convince you not to get a refund, tell them to upgrade you to a better model ssd or motherboard.

My thought was two-fold:

1. Increases likelyhood that the problem will be solved by replacement parts.  In case there is something wonky about the interaction of parts, or a particular run of hardware, etc.  Getting different models will only increase chance of solving the problem -- and obviously you don't want to downgrade.

2. It seems like it's also fair for you to expect that if you are having to go through all of this inconvenience, and if they are trying to convince you not to demand a refund, the least they could do is upgrade your parts in order to increase the odds of solving the problem.