Dell D600's ****... I need stress test software

My company uses the every popular Dell D600's for out remote users. They lasted about a year before they start falling apart and acting up. Between the LCD hinges crumbling and splitting, the next POS part on these machines are the motherboards. I replace about 3-5 a week, out of 200 or so laptops out there. Most popular failures are, PCMCIA slots, PSU wont even POST, NIC and Modem like to disable out of the blue in BIOS, date and time like to run like the wind and mess up the windows time... and worst of all (my whole point to this topic) they freeze up and run like poo. Not to mention the referb boards for the warranty come back 30% of the time DOA.

These machines are all ghosted hard drives and configured 99% the same way software wise... and when I take a hd out of the freezing up machine and put it in another "known good" laptop it runs like a champ. The RAM is good and passes mem-tests.

lets see some ideas about how I go ahead and stress the heck out of these machines, so I dont throw a motherboard in a machine and send the user out the door with a laptop that is just as flakey as the one they brought in for repair.

 

Hi,
There are some "stress" tests in Sandra in my signature. Check utilities at
www.majorgeeks.com

If the breakdowns appear to be "everywhere ", I wouldn't be certain that testing "this or that" hardware might give you reliable information.

If the breakdowns are all over the place, I would suspect the motherboard or maybe the power supply system. After you have changed mobos, are they coming back again?

A few of us have Dells and I would not expect many of those to have your model and maybe fewer still to have one that is "playing up ". The Dell Community Forums might be a good place to search or ask in.

Luck.

Matt

 

I will try that software you mentioned.

As for the dell fourms, they are a waste of time... Any support I try to get from dell, they try to turn around on us and blame it on software and OS.

 

Think I know what mean
I haven't looked around the forums much, but I don't think many of the people that post there are of that opinion. I think they will help you out to the best of their ability, without the "It's your software" style that the Technical Support use. They are users like yourself, not support staff.

Matt