Free Detailed PC Analysis

Stephen Bucaro ----------------------------------------------------------
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Free Detailed PC Analysis

By Stephen Bucaro

Although Windows Device Manager, Microsoft System
Information, and Norton's System Information program can
provide you with information about your computer system,
they don't provide the same complete details that are
provided by 3b Software's Sandra (System Analyzer
Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant).

The free version of Sandra includes 50 modules that
provide diagnostic, benchmarking, and performance tune-ups
for different hardware devices and subsystems, including
CPUs, modems, BIOS, drives, graphic cards, and DOS and
Windows memory. It will tell you your system's video
memory size, motherboard chipset, PCI slot usage, and
SIMM or DIMM memory module identification. The latest
version includes the additional modules CPU multimedia
benchmarking, and network and memory bandwidth
benchmarking.

Download Sandra from http://www.sisoftware.co.uk
You will need a file unzip program like WinZip to extract
the 2.36 MB zip file. Close all programs before executing
the setup.exe program. When setup is complete, click on
the Finish button to reboot your computer. Like most high
quality software, Sandra comes with an uninstall utility.
Sandra also comes with a browser based FAQ file and a
browser based help file, but the help file is Web based.

Sandra's Performance Tune Up Wizard advises you about what
hardware upgrades would be best for your system. However,
you don't have to run Performance Tune up Wizard because
each module also provides you with performance tips. For
example, the multimedia benchmarking module warned me that
my on-board video's use of shared memory greatly reduces
performance and that I should use a video card.

It's fun to open the various modules and probe your
computer system. I found the most interesting module to be
"Processes Information". You can start any program and
find out how much memory it uses and what DLL's it uses.
Sandra System analyzer, diagnostic and benchmarking
modules are one tool every PC technician should definitely
have in their toolkit.
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