Cleaning & Testing Used Computers In 3 easy steps

The process in witch I test and refurbish PCs has taken my a very long time and some trial & error to get everything right. I have what I now believe to be the best method possible. And even though this is not an exciting subject I am going to share the entire process with you.

I will start my explanation by describing the best possible scenario and work from there

Backed up any necessary files or image the hard disk drive if possible before starting this guide.
Step One: House Cleaning



I open the PC case check for any water, snow, bugs, rodents or dampness of any kind. If any moisture is found I wipe up any water & attempt to clean any dust & dirt out of the case and let it dry for at least 24 hours. If the computer was submerged other action will be necessary I will discuss this later.

Having a dry system, I clean out any dust from all fans and power supply. And remove the CPU heat sink completely. Using a 2 inch paint brush I carefully clean dust from the CPU sink and any chip-set & video card sinks if necessary. Removing dust from a system can resolve many issues.

Now is a great time to check the heat sink compound between the heat sink and the Processor. If it looks dry and cracked like chalk, has brown edges, or formed a dry ring with recessed areas it must be removed and replaced. Apply a small amount new compound I prefer Arctic Silver. Remember its not like icing a cake just a small drop will cover the chip.

Carefully reapply the cleaned heat sinks and fans and you ready for Step 2:


Step 2: Starting the system or "FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!".
Check that everything is reassembled. All fans connected and your heat sinks firmly reattached and seated on their chips. your now ready to start the system. Power on the system and immediately enter the BIOS (Press the F2, F10, Delete or what ever the POST screen tells you to press to "Enter Setup" or "Boot Menu"). If you missed the screen just hold the power button down or press the reset button. Check your "PC Health Status" in the BIOS. This screen will show you voltage outputs, fan speeds & temperatures. In sure that your are out putting 12v, 5, and 3.3v. Check that your fans are turning at a good RPM. What is a "good RPM"? The RPM that cools your system to under 90F and the processor to under or around 120F (European users can use Google to convert I live in the US : )

Now check to see that all fans are spinning at there proper speed and you don't hear any grinding or vibrations from any of the computers fans, power supply, hard drive or CD Rom. Remember that it may take several hours or even days to hear a dying component. Time for Step 3 its getting serious.


Step 3: Active System testing or Getting SERIOUS!

Now that things are running well its time to test the system. I first test the RAM. I employ Memtest 86 +. Its fast and easy. You can download it from there site and burn it onto a CD-R. All you do to start the program is pop the disc in your optical drive and reboot. If the program doesn't start when you reboot the system enter the BIOS and tell your BIOS to boot from the CD Rom device first before the HDD or use the system boot menu. Just boot the system and you should see Memtest 86 screen. Make sure the test is running for about a minute and walk away. The test will take anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple hours to complete depending on the amount of ram you have and the speed of your ram.

Now that your rams tested test your HDD. I use a little utility called PC Check. Its the most versital PC Testing Utility that I know of. You can also use SpinRite 6 witch is more accurate however much slower. PC Check is a bootable utility just like Memtest. In the menu select Advanced Diagnostics tests. Then Hard Disks. I like to use the SMART Immediate Test. This takes less than 30s. This will tell you if the drive has had any previous command failures and may be failing. After that I fire up the Non-Destructive Write Test by default the test will take 10 minutes. You can change the settings in the menues to force the test to take as long as you like or test the entire drive. A bad drive will have usually failures within the first 10 minutes. If you find any failures test the drive longer and then I recommend replacing the drive and retesting.

ITS OVER!

Well we have cleaned dust, checked fans & Heat sinks, Tested RAM and Hard Disk Drives. If your system has made it this far its in good shape and ready for an operating system to be installed if your rebuilding completely. Of course you backed up any nessary files before started working right.

Later on I will write more detailed how to s for the more difficult problems that you may encounter while preforming testing.


See the Next Entry for OS Installation and Slip Stream Sliding Madness.


Some image by http://www.pachd.com/