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Best total diagnostic tool for dos/windows

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First post, by Gahhhrrrlic

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I have a machine that I have been building which has a nice array of performance hardware from the late 90s era but runs slow as hell and I'm trying to figure out why. It's a fresh install so software is not the problem. I have a theory it's the hard drive but this led me to wanting a convenient piece of freeware capable of giving me a speed test on everything, which leads me to my question: Is there a freeware application for use in both a DOS and a Windows environment, which can check the speed of the CPU, RAM, Graphics card, Hard Drive, LAN, etc and report back in some user friendly way via bar chart or numerically, how fast everything is?

I feel like this has probably been talked and archived to death for DOS at least but I seem to be having trouble finding a link to the best one and for Windows (9X/XP) I can't find anything yet so apologies in advance but if someone can point me to a good one for the technically inclined user, that would be nice. Something with bar or line graphs for every piece of hardware is what I'm going for ideally.

https://hubpages.com/technology/How-to-Maximi … -Retro-Computer

Reply 1 of 5, by Jo22

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Dr. Hardware was available for both DOS and Windows and was very user-friendly.
DerSammler has collectied several trial/shareware releases of the DOS version, I recall.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 2 of 5, by Gahhhrrrlic

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Jo22 wrote:

Dr. Hardware was available for both DOS and Windows and was very user-friendly.
DerSammler has collectied several trial/shareware releases of the DOS version, I recall.

It seems like a nice piece of hardware. Unfortunately I couldn't get much out of it, partly because it's in German and partly because it didn't test particularly well, with errors popping up and such. I got CPU results that were fairly nominal and the hard drive gave me a bar but was pretty terse in info I could make sense of. Video crashed. Maybe there's something else to compliment this?

https://hubpages.com/technology/How-to-Maximi … -Retro-Computer

Reply 3 of 5, by derSammler

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Look here:
http://retro-net.de/drhard/

"e" after the version number stands for English, "d" for German. Try 9.0e first, it's the newest one and doesn't crash where older versions often do.

Reply 4 of 5, by Gahhhrrrlic

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derSammler wrote:

Look here:
http://retro-net.de/drhard/

"e" after the version number stands for English, "d" for German. Try 9.0e first, it's the newest one and doesn't crash where older versions often do.

I tried this too but it didn't work. In auto mode it simply exits out and in manual mode, it asks me 10 thousand questions and then exits out. So far I haven't found the particular test that seems to be causing it to exit but can't get any report back so... oh well. Thanks for trying to help. I'm sure it works fine for some, just not in my case... maybe I have a hardware conflict that is confusing it.

https://hubpages.com/technology/How-to-Maximi … -Retro-Computer

Reply 5 of 5, by Jo22

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Hmm. weird. Sorry that it doesn't work. 🙁
I used to use Dr. Hardware (DOS) back in the 90s. Sure, it had lots of windows popping up..
But that that was okay for me, since I used it occasionally only.

Alternatively, you can also give CheckIt! a try. It's a classic. 😀
Besides the popular DOS versions (v2 and v3 mainly), there's also v4, a professional version and a Windows version.
The CD-ROM of the latter version also included a DOS version, I recall. Not sure if report files can be exchanged, though.

On Windows, I later also used Sisoft Sandra..
Maybe it's worth a try, too.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

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