Hardware diagnostics software

I'm having problems with a Windows PC (can't even get Vista 64 to install), is there any free diagnostics software?

 

Well first off check to make sure your processor isn't a 32bit (X86). 64bit versions of Windows will not install on a 32bit machine.

If that is good to go, it could be a failed/failing hard drive not letting you install Windows.


Post more information if you can. Like do you get blue screens while in the middle of trying to install Windows or something else or?

 

CPU is a Athlon 64 6000+ dual core.
I've tried a second hard drive, but it too might be defective.

 

If you have access to another computer, I recommend you download Hiren's Boot CD.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

If you have access to another computer, download that, burn it to a CD and boot from the CD. There are a ton of tools for hardware diagnostics. First one I'd say is to run Western Digital's Life Guard tool. It runs a SMART test to check for bad sectors and so on.

Only other I can think of is maybe a bad connection between the hard drive and motherboard, or motherboard is dying. OR, if you can get another copy of Windows, try that. It could very well be a bad CD. (Bad CD is more plausible if the hard drives check out to be okay).