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How do I find out the quality of systems

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Hi,
I recently joined a small company as a systems administrator. I bought about 7 new systems which have been assembled by my vendor. I have problems with those systems which are not even 1 month old. Problems like the system swithcing off all by itself, mouse hanging, slow performance etc…

The system configuration is AMD K6 500, 64 mb ram, 10.2 gb hard disk. Moreover in the system the hard disk capacity is shown as 8 gb or 6 gb at times when the actual capacity is 10.2 gb.

Can someone tell me how to find out if my systems are faulty.

regards
rajesh

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How do I find out the quality of systems

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OK – First thing. The Hard Drives – It is not uncommon for drive makers to advertise and sell their drives based on unformatted capacity. Getting 8GB or so would be about right for a 10GB HD. Now then for the rest of the problems. Dig out the invoices for these PC’s and item by item verify visually that all the components that you ordered are what you got. Video cards, Hard Drives … EVERYTHING. Sometimes you will order one part and get something else. As the saying goes… Trust but verify. After that run diag checks on each peice to see what is wrong.

How do I find out the quality of systems

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It’s very hard to tell if your system is really running up to speed but there are a few things you can check to make sure things are compatable. First off don’t let them use any generic or referbished part. Second, try to get a name brand of everything including RAM motherboard etc… or at least a name an number you can call. Third, some BIOS will not support more that x amount of GB hard drives and then you should check with the mother board vender to find a patch. All in all if you know the website or have a phone number for you parts you can call to see if they really work together.

How do I find out the quality of systems

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How do I find out the quality of systems

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rajesh, The first item that can affect all computer parts is the Power Supply. For most systems today that are not specifically designed you should have at least a 250 watt power supply. The fact that you mention the power supply switch off by itself leads me to believe that your vender started cutting corners there. Power Supplis vary a lot.I shy away from all in one motherboards unless they are manufactured by a name brand company like Intel. You can buy motherboards which share you main memory and devote some of that to video memory. Less expensive motherboards do not allocate the memory well and automatically take 8MB ofsystem Ram. If you have such a motherboard you are now down to 56MB. Right Click ‘My Computer’ and it will tell you your memory. If it is less than 64MB then the video is built in and taking memory. Does the hard disk space change from 8GB to 6Gb on the same system or are systems different? They might not have used the same drive in all systems. Go intoyour bios setting as the system boots up and check to see what hard disk is shown. Hit the ‘delete’ key and or sometimes ‘F2’ to get into the bios depending on whose motherboard as your system boots up. The motherboard does make a difference. Onething to check is that some people sell system and advertise 100mhz memory buss. They then proceed to put 66mhz memory in. Check you file system with System tools. You can fin this by clicking ‘Start’.’Programs’.’Accesories’.’system tools’ andthen ‘system information’ Then click on Tools and run ‘system file checker’. This Microsoft utility checks the major system files to see if they are corupt at all. Check to see that that they did not put the hard disk and the CD-Rom on the same channel.

How do I find out the quality of systems

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How do I find out the quality of systems

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The HDD problem might be solved by BIOS update. The older mainboards do not support HDDs larger than 8.4GB. Some of MBs’ updates allow supporting larger HDDs up to 30 GB usually.
I would not be surprized if by BIOS updating some of other problems disappear. For sure, you must check the modules specification and compare it to the actually implemented in your systems.

How do I find out the quality of systems

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How do I find out the quality of systems

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I would start by finding out what was installed in your boxes.I suspect you may
have Cheapo systems in which case I would
return them to your supplier.Did you get
tech manuals for your motherboards, video
boards etc.There is a lot of junk on themarket.The only motherboards I would accept
would be ASUS or ACER.They have superb support.I would never accept MAXTOR drives.
They are the cheapest.The k6 is already
obsolete.I really think you bought yourself
some major problems.If you shouldwant to
know what to buy the next time, I’m sure
a lot of people at techrepublic would be happy to give you some advice.
regards BOB

How do I find out the quality of systems

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