Hardware testers

I have just spent many, many hours with a friend on his two computers. He has them connected via LAN Ethernet cards.
The hours were used up trying to set up compatible Clients/Adapters/Protocols, rebooting both machines/testing etc
It finally turned out, by replacing it, that one LAN card was physically dead.
Is there any way (eg an app) to check the HW integrity of cards in the PC ? (Video/Sound/LAN etc)
regards

 

At one time, network cards came with testing software. That testing software was always proprietary to a specific brand and most often to a particular model.

I don't know of any such software these days. Perhaps some network guru will happen along and enlighten us.