benchmarking and testing cd

[cybermaniac]

hey guyz

i'm considering making a cd with a few colleagues which would have benchmarking and testing tools specifically for testing and troubleshooting pcs.

now, this will be an ongoing project which will be based both as dos type commands and a fully fledged windows PE environment.

What i need from you guys, is a listing of what you want, within a realistic proposal (so don't say we want COD4 in there lol)

there will be 2 stages as i've said above (these are prelim choices, not all of them will be included and some diff options that aren't listed might be included):

Stage 1: Dos Commands (aka pre-boot commands and tools)

---|Main Menu

--------|Boot Folding@Home Benchmark

--------|Boot Recovery Console

--------|Windows Boot Disks

---|HDD Testing Tools

-----|IBM/Hitachi

--------|Drive Fitness Test V4.05

--------|Drive Feature Tool

-----|Seagate

--------|Seatools Desktop V1.06.02

--------|Seatools Desktop V3.02.03

-----|Western Digital

--------|DLG Diagnostic V4.15

--------|DLG Diagnostic V5.04c

--------|Data Lifeguard V11.0

-----|Fujitsu

--------|Diagnostic Tool V6.30

-----|Samsung

--------|SHDIAG V1.25

--------|HUTIL V2.00

-----|Maxtor/Quantum

--------|PowerMax V4.09

--------|PowerMax V4.22

--------|SCSIMax V1.21

---|RAM Testing Tools

--------|Memtest86 V3.2

--------|Memtest86+ V1.65

--------|Windows Memory Diagnostic

The versions don't really matter, I am merely using them as reference to a livecd i use currently - feel free to amend the list in your post if you wish

Stage 2: Windows PE environment

Benchmarking and System Info:

Everest Ultimate Edition

CPU-Z

Orthos

3dMark

SuperPI

Stress Prime 2004

Prime95 v25.5

Rivatuner

ATI Tool

Sandra

memtestmod

thats all i have atm - help me out boys n girls

btw - please include links in your posts

 

[Ham]

For the windows i'd need rivatuner, ATI tool and possibly S&M.

Memtestmod and sandra may be useful too

 

[cybermaniac]

updated with your suggestions

 

[Rastalovich]

Without thinking too deeply, lemme just say to try and keep ur idea usb pen mountable too if at all possible.

Starting to h8 cds/dvds myself now.

 

[cybermaniac]

i'll see what we can come up with sir!

ok here is what i have winpe side:

---|Benchmarking

--------|ATItool

--------|HDtach

--------|ORTHOS

--------|Prime95

--------|RivaTuner

--------|S&M

--------|Stress Prime 2004

--------|Super PI Mod 1.5

---|System Information

--------|CPU-Z V1.35

--------|EVEREST Ultimate Engineer Edition v4.00.976

--------|SiSoftware Sandra XI

--------|GPU-Z.0.1.5

--------|Memtest Mod

---|Browsers

--------|Firefox 2.0.0.2

---|Recovery And Destruct

--------|Active Killdisk

--------|O&O Format Recovery 4.0

--------|Recover My Files 3.98.5124

--------|RecoverKeys

 

[cybermaniac]

**updates**

ok guys, seems that windows PE cannot take any modified drivers (aka nothing other than generic windows grfx drivers) - trust me, we've hacked it so much to try and force it - we're on build 230 or summat close - which kinda kills the grfx benchmarking.

i can still include CPU, HDD, RAM benchmarking/info.

updated list:

---|Benchmarking

--------|HDtach

--------|ORTHOS

--------|Prime95

--------|S&M

--------|Stress Prime 2004

--------|Super PI Mod 1.5

---|System Information

--------|CPU-Z V1.35

--------|EVEREST Ultimate Engineer Edition v4.00.976

--------|Memtest Mod

---|Browsers

--------|Firefox 2.0.0.2

---|Recovery And Destruct

--------|Active Killdisk

--------|O&O Format Recovery 4.0

--------|Recover My Files 3.98.5124

--------|RecoverKeys

feel free to add any more

 

[cybermaniac]

an update, one member of my team (of two ), has basically managed to get grfx testing possible. Have included full DX9.0 support and Open GL; full sound (5.1 tested). Driver support for all ATI cards (as far as we can tell), have not yet tested with nvidia card range. Because of the licensing agreements with windows PE, we will also end up having to develop a custom operating environment so if you guys have any thoughts or suggestions feel free to chip in...

Any other features that you lot want feel free to reply with, and we'll let you know as we can.

We are also looking at a USB bootable version but we cant really let you know yet seeing as we havent completed the DVD version (so far its about 1.4GB big)

 

[equk]

Can you boot windows off of a cd like linux (livecd) ?

If you can, that could be interesting as the install could be cut down and also the same on all the systems you test. I've never seen this before tho

A linux livecd could be good

Altho I guess you would want to bench on DirectX

 

[cybermaniac]

yup, this will be a bootable dvd, so no need for an HDD, the aim of this project is to be able to benchmark your PC pre-windows environment so that you can carry this dvd as part of a new build toolkit.

This as far as I know, is the first of it's kind. So if we can get it working sucessfully (I shall be using this system to test my new rig with any luck) and I will be doing an A and B test (A being livecd and B being within windows).

DX support has now been built in thanks to the tireless efforts of one of the members of my team, and so has a few other things we are hoping to surprise you with.

Watch this space!

 

[equk]

yup, this will be a bootable dvd, so no need for an HDD, the aim of this project is to be able to benchmark your PC pre-windows environment so that you can carry this dvd as part of a new build toolkit.

This as far as I know, is the first of it's kind. So if we can get it working sucessfully (I shall be using this system to test my new rig with any luck) and I will be doing an A and B test (A being livecd and B being within windows).

DX support has now been built in thanks to the tireless efforts of one of the members of my team, and so has a few other things we are hoping to surprise you with.

Watch this space!

This sounds interesting.

How will it save settings and use so many drivers etc? (without conflicting) sounds like it could grow into a BIG project, especially being a LiveCD.

How do you save your benchmark results aswell? I guess if there's no HDD you'd need to use USB Mass storage or something

Also how does the Virtual Memory work?

 

[iFuseDan]

How will it save settings and use so many drivers etc? (without conflicting)

equk - I'm the programmer in cybermaniac's 2 man team lol; so far on boot from cd (or USB which is to come), it basicly utilises a greatly expanded winpe driver library - the driver scanning takes upto 5 minutes, but will install about 90% of hardware. The intent is to update the library with most chipset drivers, sata/raid drivers, and also most GPU and CPU drivers that are recent, no point supporting dreadfully old machine builds. you can see this here:

(the GUI wrapper).

sounds like it could grow into a BIG project, especially being a LiveCD

Trust me i know - the livebench shell (which will resemble explorer) is being programmed from the ground up; at the moment has the basic open windows support, with a menu, no screenshots of this yet - although im currently working on seeing if i can emulate the windows explorer shell-tray - but this is proving challenging due to the programming tasks that this involves.

How do you save your benchmark results aswell? I guess if there's no HDD you'd need to use USB Mass storage or something

The idea is that you SHOULD be able to access your existing hard drives so you can just save it to "C:" (no guarantee on drive letter arrangement in winpe). - There is also going to be a small ram-disk incase you were to need somewhere temporary to save documents - i'll work out proper plug n play USB support after i have the majority of the rest of the code / modifications working.

Also how does the Virtual Memory work?

Windows virtual memory will work as normal - the 92MB RAMDisk that is created, there will be no paging support. When we get round to the next big build, and the relevent testing I or cybermaniac will post the relevent mem usage and screenshots.

Hope this answers some of your questions,

Dan

 

[equk]

Sounds really excellent

I'm not all that into benching, so seems OTT to me, but I guess it is something new and innovative. Also something which could be expanded upon for various other operations.