What are the major diagnostic applications that can be used during the repair of a computer?

Answer 1

It all depends on the trouble. Here are some of the applications and categories:

1. Assuming the computer does boot, antivirus and spyware applications would be among the first used. That would include Norton Antivirus, Mcafee, Spybot Search and Destroy, Malware Bytes, Lavasoft Adaware, etc.

2. The control panel and programs such as Autoruns (free from Microsoft) can be used to look for and remove programs that start when the computer starts.

3. Registry tools are often needed, ranging from Regedit that comes with Windows, to Norton WinDoctor, Autoruns, to various specialty registry tools, including several named "RegCleaner."

4. Junk remover tools are helpful. Ccleaner (formerly known as Cr*p Cleaner) is a common one.

5. Hardware identification utilities come in handy. That would include Belarc Advisor, CPUz, GPUz, and others.

6. Data recovery programs are often used. There are many different ones, and nearly every major utility package has one.

7. Hard drive integrity programs. In the older days, Spinrite was among the top recommended in this category. When drives required low-level formatting, Spinrite could be used for recovery, refresh the format, and to reformat any bad spots, blocking any from use which cannot be trusted. Nowadays, such programs like Spinrite are not applicable, but there are utilities to analyze the sectors, recover any data, and to mark any bad sectors so they can be avoided.

8. Hardware testers and analyzers. Those can help spot electronic problems, bad memory, CPU errors, and so on. Then you would know what parts to change.

9. Password recovery software is sometimes used.

10. Partition editors and partition recovery programs are used in data recovery and in resolving odd hard drive partition problems.

11. There are specialized security programs such as Hijack This and specialized antivirus programs like Combofix. Combofix is a very powerful program designed for a narrow range of problems, and you may cause problems if you don't know how to use it (or why).