Owners Manual

Running the System Diagnostics 167
Running the System Diagnostics
If you experience a problem with your system, run the diagnostics before
calling for technical assistance. The purpose of the diagnostics is to test your
system's hardware without requiring additional equipment or risking data
loss. If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, service and support
personnel can use diagnostics test results to help you solve the problem.
Using Online Diagnostics
To assess a system problem, first use the online diagnostics. Online
diagnostics is a suite of diagnostic programs, or test modules, that include
diagnostic tests on chassis and storage components such as hard drives,
physical memory, communications and printer ports, NICs, CMOS, and
more. If you are unable to identify the problem using the online diagnostics,
then use the embedded system diagnostics.
The files required to run the online diagnostics for systems running supported
Microsoft
®
Windows
®
and Linux operating systems are available at
support.dell.com and on the CDs that came with your system. For
information about using diagnostics, see the Dell Online Diagnostics User's
Guide.
Embedded System Diagnostics Features
The embedded system diagnostics provides a series of menus and options for
particular device groups or devices. The system diagnostics menus and
options allow you to:
• Run tests individually or collectively
• Control the sequence of tests
• Repeat tests
• Display, print, or save test results
• Temporarily suspend testing if an error is detected or terminate testing
when a user-defined error limit is reached
• View help messages that briefly describe each test and its parameters
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