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Local vs. Network Diagnostics

Obviously anyone who maintains PCs, whether local or on a network, is bound to be familiar with the demands of getting the offending machine back up and running as quickly as possible!

Most have experienced the frustration of trying to pin point the problem, which could even boil down to being simply a faulty component.

Some of you may even have used diagnostic software to help locate the problem, saving in some cases hours of time.

Of course the accuracy of the many diagnostics software and tools available on the market varies, depending on just how in depth their tests are, and just how thoroughly they interrogate the system.

Sometimes people ask us why they can’t run our diagnostic software, MicroScope, over a network. Most of the reasons for this are related to OS independence, so this article should be read after finishing The Importance of OS Independence.

One reason though is that hardware problems of any consequence will normally interfere with network communications. If you can even talk to another system over the network, you have just checked out about 95% of what you can check out over a network. Any testing more thorough than that will require local access.

Not being able to do in-depth hardware testing over a network is just an extreme case of the truism that you can’t do accurate hardware testing under a general-purpose OS such as Windows, DOS or Linux, because these programs are designed to run the hardware in the background, insulated from the user and applications.

The bootable operating system that comes with MicroScope bypasses all of that OS interference, but it also bypasses the network configuration, protocols, NIC drivers and other parameters that are unique to each networked system. It’s easy to forget that Windows or Linux on that system originally had to be configured for proper network operation, and that had to be done at the system itself.

It is technically possible to make the MicroScope operating system network-capable, but it would have to be set up on each machine being diagnosed, just as the resident OS had to be set up. Then, the system would have to be re-configured for the resident OS after MicroScope had done its job in pin pointing the hardware error. As a practical matter, nobody is going to do that when they can just boot up MicroScope and find the problem in a minute or two.

Of course, many competing products avoid the reconfiguration problem by running under Windows, and these diagnostics can theoretically be executed over a network using Windows’ own network configuration. The price they pay is that they cannot directly access the hardware and get the same accurate information available to MicroScope, and if used over a network they are even further removed from every piece of hardware, with the possible exception of the network card.

The short answer is that it is not possible to get accurate hardware diagnostic results over a network. There is just no substitute for sitting down at the ailing machine, and running the best diagnostic program available.

Disclaimer - The Micro 2000 Tech Tip is a free service providing information only. While we use reasonable care to see that this information is correct, we do not guarantee it for accuracy, completeness or fitness for a particular purpose. Micro 2000, Inc. shall not be liable for damages of any kind in connection with the use or misuse of this information.