Elk Systems, Inc.

Support

Interactive Forum Coming Soon!

Please check out some of the software listed below to help guide you in troubleshooting your issue.

Hard Drive Diagnostics

Samsung has a utility to test their drives, but beware of the tests as this has an option to erase your hard drive and Samsung claims no responsability. The diagnostic tool from Samsung is HUTIL and can be booted from Floppy, USB, CD, PXE.

Seagate Seatools for DOS has replaced SeaTools Desktop and PowerMax. SeaTools for DOS can test Seagate or Maxtor Parallel ATA (PATA and IDE) and Serial ATA (SATA) interface disc drives. Because the software boots to its own operating system you can test your drive regardless of the OS installed on it. You can even test a new or completely blank drive. SeaTools for DOS will instruct the drive to run its built in Drive Self Test (DST) and give either a pass or fail status. If you are troubleshooting your disc drive and the DST passes, then you have a good drive! Can be booted from Floppy, CD, USB, or PXE.
Firmware Recommendations for Barracuda 7200.11, ES.2 SATA, and DiamondMax 22 Drives

Toshiba uses a software diagnostics program for Fujitsu Branded Toshiba hard drives that can be downloaded from their Software Utilities section.

Western Digital hard drives have there own diagnostic tools know as Data Lifeguard. These tools can also run from Floppy, CD, USB, or PXE.

Memory Diagnostics

Microsoft Memory Diagnostics tests the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your computer and can be downloaded from Microsoft Online Crash Analysis and can be booted from Floppy or CD.

Memtest86+ is by far the most thorough and comprehensive memory testing software out on the market. You can download Memtest86+ pre-build images for running from Floppy, CD, USB, and PXE.

Video Diagnostics

Microsoft DirectX is a diagnostic tool that is built into DirectX software on Windows 2K/XP systems. The diagnostic software has features to test several software routines that directly relate to specific hardware drawing calulations on the video card. This is only meant as a quick test.

To start the quick tests, click on Start and then run. Type in dxdiag in the run box and press enter. Click on the Display Tab and then Click the buttons to run the individual tests; DirectDraw and Direct3D.

Virus / Spyware / Other

Microsoft's Sysinternals has an excellent set of tools rolled up into a single Suite of Tools, known as the Sysinternals Suite. A couple of tools you can download separately, in case you don't want to download the whole pack, that are very useful are the following;

Process Explorer - Find out what files, registry keys and other objects processes have open, which DLLs they have loaded, and more. This uniquely powerful utility will even show you who owns each process.
Process Monitor - Monitor file system, Registry, process, thread and DLL activity in real-time.
Rootkit Revealer - Scan your system for rootkit-based malware.
TCP View - Active socket command-line viewer.

Microsoft Security Essentials provides users with Antivirus and Spyware protection and is free for Genuine Windows authenicated computers. Get the latest Microsoft Security Essentials for your system.

Symantec online Scan & Virus Scan

SuperAntiSpyware is a great tool to remove some of the "XP Antivirus" versions, or any of the newer fake Windows Security software along with other malware and rootkit software. Free Download

Remote Support

If you need help and are OK with us remoting into your desktop by a qualified technician to try to fix your issue, then please click on the link below. This will then connect you to our server so we may remotely control your PC.

This software is sometimes detected as spyware or malware because the nature of taking control of another desktop is not a typical security practice.

Once you click the link, you will have two options, Save or Run.

Save - This will download the program to a folder of your choice, but for easy access it's recommended to download to your desktop. With the software on your system, you can just re-create the connection when needed. But for security best practice, I suggest that you remove it once we are done.
Run - This will extract the file to a temp directory and run the program. Once the connection is closed, the software should delete itself.

Disclaimer: We should in no way be held responsible for any data loss including Windows not working properly or data theft should it occur, or the event of a hostile or non hostile action such as a domain hijack or other. Agree to Disclaimer