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Answer: Yes. PC-Doctor cares about what our customers, partners, and others think, and we are always searching for ways to better communicate with them. Please join our new online community to make your voice heard and learn about PC-Doctor, diagnostics, technical and engineering subjects, and whatever interests you. - Our new community, launched in July 2007, consists of a blog and forums.
- We especially welcome involvement from our customers, and anyone in the diagnostics or PC industries.
- Learn about Dr. Blip, PC-Doctor's chief promotions officer — a very unique and animated member of our executive team.
- Promote your great ideas and pick up some new ones. This community will be a gathering place for leaders in our industry, and will be a vehicle for improving the PC experience for everyone.
- Find out more about the inner workings of PC-Doctor.
- Share in the fun we have working at the leading company in our industry.
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Answer: The Multipurpose USB Device is a dongle in addition to a test and indicator device. It must remain plugged in for all Service Center use in both Windows and DOS. | | |
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Answer: By default, the USB Loopback Test can use any USB device as a test device. If you want to use the included USB/Parallel Port Loopback adapter as a test device, you need to add the following line to the USBTEST.ini file:
iUsingUsbWrap=1
The default value for this is 0, which specifies that any USB device will work for the USB Loopback Test. | | |
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Answer: Anytime a Service Center dialog box or user prompt appear on-screen, the Multipurpose USB Device will flash the attention signal. This simply indicates you need to take action with the user prompt or dialog box before Service Center proceeds. If a user prompt or dialog box has a defined time limit for remaining open, the Multipurpose USB Device will flash the attention signal. If the defined time limit passes without user interaction, the test will record a N/A result in the test log but the Multipurpose USB Device will signal as Passed. To alter the behavior for timed prompts, add the following parameter to the [PCDR] section of the PCDR.ini: iLedAttnType= This parameter supports three values:
- Value 0: This value will not generate an Attention Required signal when user prompts appear on screen.
- Value 1: This value will generate an Attention Required signal for any prompt that does not include a defined time limit.
- Value 2: This value will generate an Attention Required signal for all user prompts.
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Answer: The Hard Drive Pattern Test will only run on hard drives formatted as FAT or NTFS. It will not run on unformatted drives. You might see similar errors if the test encounters any empty sectors on the drive. | | |
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Answer: If you remove the Multipurpose USB Device after starting up Service Center for DOS, you will need to reboot the system to reestablish authentication. | | |
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Answer: When booting from the Multipurpose USB Device, if both the green and yellow LEDs illuminate and the system hangs, this indicates a firmware defect which may affect the operation of your system. Contact the system or motherboard manufacturer for information on updating the firmware or BIOS. | | |
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Answer: If your Multipurpose USB Device has been corrupted or offline Service Center diagnostics are not available, you can recover it using the Multipurpose USB Device Restore Tool. For more information, SEE ALSO "Install Options Menu" on page 12. | | |
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Answer: You may need to insert the Multipurpose USB Device into an available USB port. The Multipurpose USB Device must always remain plugged into an available USB port when running Service Center for Windows | | |
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Answer: This is a known issue which we have since resolved and that will be in the next product update. Any USB thumb drive will work with this test and can be used instead of testing with a USB mouse or keyboard. | | |
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Answer: Use the following troubleshooting steps in the order they are listed: - Does the Multipurpose USB Device function in Service Center 6 for Windows? If not, restore the device by using the Restore Multipurpose USB Device link on the Service Center for Windows installer menu.
- Does the Multipurpose USB Device function on other systems running Service Center 6 for Windows? If not, contact technical support
- Can you boot directly from the Multipurpose USB Device into DOS? If not, restore the device using the Restore Multipurpose USB Device link on the Service Center 6 for Windows installer menu.
- Ensure the BIOS is set to enable USB hard drive (HDD) booting.
- Ensure the BIOS has the Multipurpose USB Device set as the first boot device.
- Ensure the BIOS is set to support legacy USB.
- In the BIOS, change the USB emulation to Auto. If that does not work, change the USB emulation to Hard Drive (HDD). If that does not work, change the USB emulation to Floppy Disk (FDD).
- You may need to try various combinations of the above BIOS settings to support the Multipurpose USB Device.
- Some systems require you to change the USB speed in order to boot.
- Some systems require you to disable legacy floppy support to boot from USB.
NOTE: Some systems may require a BIOS update. Consult the system manufacturer's website. - If you have not restored the Multipurpose USB Device in a previous step, restore the device at this time. Select Restore Multipurpose USB Device from the Service Center 6 for Windows installer menu.
- Try booting from the Service Center 6 CD instead of from the Multipurpose USB Device. Set the system BIOS to boot from CD as the first device. Insert the Service Center 6 CD into the CD or DVD drive and ensure the Multipurpose USB Device is inserted. Reboot the system.
- If the above steps have not resolved your issue, contact technical support
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Answer: You may need to alter BIOS settings. In the system BIOS configuration, position the boot device order so that USB is the first boot option. You may also need to enable USB legacy support. For more information on BIOS configuration settings, consult with the system documentation or a system support representative for your system. | | |
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Answer: You specified an invalid command line switch. For more information on supported command line switches, SEE ALSO "Appendix A - DOS Command Line Switches" on page 56. | | |
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Answer: You specified an invalid number with the /ba:xx switch. You must select a number from 1 through 10 (corresponding to an existing overlay). Make sure the overlay you specify exists. For more information on test overlays, SEE ALSO "Overlays" on page 44. | | |
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Answer: This is most likely because you have deleted a file in DOS that references a long file name in Windows. DOS does not support long file names. You can define a long file name as any file name with more than eight characters or any file extension with more than three characters. If DOS encounters a long file name, it will rename it to support the DOS filename standard. This means DOS will keep the first seven characters of the filename and append a tilde ( ~ ) symbol at the end to indicate the filename has been truncated so that DOS can read it.
When DOS truncates a file in this way, it essentially breaks the file up into multiple pointers that allow Windows to recognize the file even if the filename has been truncated. If you delete the file in Windows, it will recognize the file and all of its pointers as a single file. However, if you attempt to delete a file with a truncated file name in DOS, it will only recognize the file itself and ignore the filename pointers, leaving them in the directory. This will prevent you from deleting the directory in DOS and the filename pointers are inaccessible in Windows.
If you need to delete a file with a truncated filename on the Multipurpose USB Device, delete the file from within Windows. If you have already deleted files in DOS with truncated filenames and need to restore the directory structure, use the Multipurpose USB Device Restore Tool to restore it to its original configuration. For more information on the Multipurpose USB Device Restore Tool, SEE ALSO "Install Options Menu" on page 12. | | |
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Answer: BIOS system information reports will occasionally show a difference in information for specific devices compared to the same device found in an SMBIOS system information. This is because the SMBIOS information for a device is provided by the device vendor. If there is a discrepancy in device information between BIOS and SMBIOS, it will probably not affect performance. However, it might indicate that the BIOS vendor or system (motherboard) manufacturer did not take the additional steps to ensure that the BIOS information was correct. The real value in this is seeing SMBIOS information in a Service Center system information report without having to reboot the system and access the BIOS directly. | | |
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Answer: All the Multipurpose USB LEDs will flicker when you first insert it into a USB port. If the LEDs continue to flicker at a fast pace or appear dimly lit, it may indicate that the USB port is running at a low bus voltage, which may prevent Service Center from running. If this occurs, try plugging the Multipurpose USB Device into another USB port (for example, moving from a port on the front to a port on the back). If the issue still occurs, use the PC-Doctor Power Supply Tester to ensure a faulty power supply is not the problem. There may be other problems on the system board that would cause low bus voltage that the Power Supply tester cannot detect. | | |
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Answer: The green LED will illuminate when the USB Multipurpose Device is first plugged in. It will then periodically flash the yellow LED. The yellow flashing LED only occurs when the operating system is accessing the Multipurpose USB Device. For more information on the Multipurpose USB Device signals, SEE ALSO "Multipurpose USB Device" on page 6. | | |
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Answer: This often occurs if the device driver is not configured properly in Windows. | | |
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Answer: A list of BIOS Post codes is available on the Service Center webpage. Please note: this list of BIOS Post Codes is by no means exhaustive, and post codes are subject to change by the manufacturer without notice. Post codes vary by manufacturer, chipset, and board. Finding the post codes applicable to your application may require some detective work and liberal use of a search engine. | | |
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Answer: The Surface Scan Hard Disk utility has two subtests, Write/Verify Test and Write/Read Test, which under normal circumstances run without destroying data. However, if the PC loses power or you restart it while testing is in progress, you may lose data. Service Center for DOS displays a warning about potential data loss when you select these tests. Do not turn off or reboot the PC while either of these tests run. | | |
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Answer: This problem only occurs with FAT32 and NTFS disk partitions. DOS cannot access the FAT32 or NTFS partition information and the Service Center for DOS Logical Drive Info module will not reflect this information. However, Service Center for DOS hard drive testing is not affected by this problem. | | |
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Answer: PC-Doctor cannot test some devices in DOS unless you install the device driver first. If a PC-Doctor diagnostic test reports N/A for a device, ensure that the appropriate device driver (or enabler) is installed and run the test again. In many cases PC-Doctor can provide system information for devices even if it cannot test them. The categories PCI Info, PnPISA Info, PCMCIA Info, and DMI Info on the Hardware Info menu report information about devices whether their drivers are installed or not. | | |
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Answer: Systems with less than 128MB of memory cannot run tests in parallel due to limited memory space. However, you can still run tests sequentially. | | |
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Answer: One or more PC-Doctor diagnostic tests produced a failure. Review the test log for additional details. This error message can also occur if you use the wrong test ID with the /rt command line switch. For a complete list of test IDs, SEE ALSO "Appendix B - DOS Test IDs to use with /RT:" on page 62. | | |
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Answer: This may indicate that the system BIOS is not configured to support USB devices as storage devices. Consult the system documentation or a system support representative for information on updating or configuring the system BIOS. | | |
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Answer: The Diskette Drive category includes two destructive subtests, resulting in loss of data: Linear Write/Read and Linear Write/Random Read tests. These tests will destroy any data on the disk. You must manually select these tests, which produces a warning message explaining the possible loss of data. Use a blank formatted disk when running the Diskette Linear Write/Read and Linear Write/Random Read tests. | | | |
