Hardware and Devices
After it has been loaded, the program waits for user input. The system overview will not be performed automatically. Advantage: the application is started as fast as possible and potential risks connected with various in-depth analysis steps are avoided. You may however force the overview test to be performed unconditionally at program start in the Program Settings
Processor
Important notes:
1. This analysis requires reading of Machine specific Register (MSR). You can
disable the access to MSRs in the Program Setup.
2. Reading of MSR registers is done by Dr. Hardware kernel mode drivers. Those
support all Windows versions except Windows 10/32 Bit.
Under Windows 10/32 Bit from Build 1607, an MSR can only be read out, if Windows
10 has been updated from a previous version on this machine, or if Secure Boot
is disabled.
Description
of the main processor. Processor detection partially fails for CPUs that were
released later than this program version. Try to get the latest update.
Measurement of clock speed can only be performed on processors that provide
a Time Stamp Counter. The accuracy is about +/- 1 MHz.
Note that several processors
provide a programmable CPUID. This is another possible trap in detecting the
processor type.
The thermal sensor reading is restricted to a relative temperature value against
a maximum allowable T junction/case max temperature. Absolute temperature values
should be considered as suggestions.
Reliability rating: high as long as the processor type is known, otherwise low.
Mainbios
and Mainboard
Informations are mainly received through the SMBios database, which contains
information about system configuration and status.
However, the amount of information is sometimes reduced and data can be incomplete,
vague or unreliable, especially on elder systems. Quality mainboards usually
have a more complete and reliable database. Mimimum requirement for the analysis
is SMBios 2.1 or later.
Reliability rating: partially low.
Memory
Devices
The SDRAM memory modules are analyzed according to the Serial Presence
Detect Method (Intel Specification 1.2b, Nov. 1999, Rambus and current JEDEC
DDR/DDR2/DDR3/DDR4 specification including EPP - Enhanced Performance Profiles
Specification and XMP - Intel Extreme Memory Profile). A small eeprom chip on
the module contains the SPD information data.
The analysis requires a
chipset with known SMBus access method. Therefore several systems are not supported.
The program supports many but not all Intel, VIA, AMD, several Acer, SiS, ATI
and nVidia chipsets.
Many IBM Thinkpad models disable the SMBus access to the SDRAM specific addresses
(resp. hide the SMBus controller) and on many ALI chipset based systems the
SMBus controller is disabled (and cannot be enabled via BIOS setup). On other
systems it may help to enable Power Management (APM or ACPI) via Bios setup.
On several Asus mainboards and systems with SiS chipsets the SMBus controller
is disabled (and thus hidden) as well and it can be enabled ("hot plugged")
at runtime. There is an option in the Expert settings dialog that allows to
enable/disable the attempt to enable it. On other Asus mainboards the SPD addresses
are multiplexed and can´t be read in all cases.
Some of the fields may be
empty because not all vendors fill them up. Also the vendor name may or may
not be derived from the JEDEC ID.
Old SDRAM module with missing eeprom chip will not be supported by this analysis.
Further information about the memory modules of your system may be found via
the SMBios and chipset analysis.
Reliability rating: very high as long as the eeprom was properly programmed
by the manufacturer.
PC
Health (Registered version only)
Important!
Don´t rely on the results given by this sensor monitor! They are most
often rather reliable but wrong or missing outputs may occur on certain sensor
chips resp. systems. Extremely high temperature values or 0.0 values for fan
rotations may indicate an analysis error rather than a system disturbance. Check
the values against the h/w monitor section of the BIOS setup or a vendor specific
monitoring tool)..
Current mainboards provide
sensors for control of voltages, temperatures and fan rotation.
The inquiry is sensor-specific. A reliable interpretation of the raw values
is tricky, if no datasheet was available for the sensor chip.
As a rule of thumb the temperature sensor #1 is mostly connected to the main
processor, sensor #2 to the mainboard and the other sensors (if any) to various
external components.
You may configure the sensor
analysis through the expert settings dialog, where you may exclude specific
sensor types or change, how they are accessed (LPC chip/SMBus).
Reliability rating: varies, medium to high.
PCI
Bus
List of installed internal and external PCI and PCI Express devices. Reliability
rating: very high
COM/LPT
List of installed serial and parallel ports. All information are
gathered through documented Windows API32 calls and registry inquiry.
Reliability rating: very high.
List
of all currently installed logical drives. The corresponding physical drive,
a logical drive belongs to, is indicated as well.
Additional information is shown in a stacked bar chart: the green part symbolizes
the remaining free capacity for the drive (for harddisk and net drives).
There are furthermore register tabs with partition information and optical drive
specific information.
(S)ATA/ATAPI
Devices
There are two ways to access (S)ATA(PI) devices under Windows:
either through direct port access or by using a documented interface.
You can select either direct port access or the documented method in the expert
settings dialog. A huge number of external host adapters and third/fourth IDE
channels are supported as well (based on CMD, Promise, Highpoint chips).
The field AAM/APM Setup describes the settings for the Automatic Acoustic Management and Advanced Power Management supported by harddisks since about 2000. Information given here includes (for AAM): command status (not supported/supported, enabled/supported and disabled), current value (0-255) as well as the vendor recommended setting. Note that the current setting only takes effect if the command is enabled.
Basic SMART informations
are given for each harddisk drive model including NVME drives, extended (vendor
specific) informations are provided for numerous (but not all) SSD drives.
(Please report missing data - we will then add your model in the next program
version).
Gathers informations about each video adapter and monitor. Additional informations are available for nVidia and ATI/AMD graphics adapter, as long as the approriate device drivers are installed. Furthermore the supported resolutions and driver capabilities are listed.
Printer
The printer analysis supports both local and network printers
as well as virtual printer device drivers like fax or PDF drivers.
Especially the inquiry of network printers may last some time.
Analysis of the input devices. The analysis especially reports the current setup and the availability of special features of these devices.
USB
Devices
The USB analysis detects devices that are properly installed under Windows.
Since USB includes many device types, additional detailed information about
printers, scanner and drives are shown in proprietary analysis sections.
Multimedia
The multimedia analysis supports several types of devices according to the Windows
Multimedia Specification like Wave-In/Out, Midi-In/Out, mixer and auxiliary
devices. They all may belong to one physical sound device. Besides sound devices
this analysis also includes game controller information.
Scanner
The scanner analysis supports devices connected to a TWAIN data source (nowadays
not frequently used anymore). The output varies according to the vendor support
for various TWAIN inquiry commands. Sometimes more than one TWAIN data source
is connected to one physical device.
Important! Scanner, camaras
etc. have to be powered on. Twain source has to be installed.
SCSI
The analysis supports both (S)ATA/ATAPI as well as native SCSI devices. For
SCSI block devices, detailed information are provided on the second register
page, as long as the device supports the Mode and Log Sense pages.