Test the Life of a Laptop

If the laptop fails unexpectedly, you could lose years worth of pictures, documents and personal files. Testing the condition of your laptop components from time to time is one of the best ways to protect you from the possible loss of data.

Following are the steps to test the life of your laptop components:

1). Shut down the laptop and wait for it to power down completely. Press the power button and watch the screen closely.

2). Press the appropriate key to enter setup mode. This hot key varies from laptop to laptop, so watch the screen for a message saying "Press XXX to enter setup."

3). Wait for the setup menu to appear, then arrow over to the advanced menu. Scroll through the list of options until you find the available hardware tests. You should see both a fast and a thorough hard drive test, and perhaps a memory test as well.

4). Run all of the available tests from the setup menu. The results can tell you a great deal about the health of the laptop, from the condition of the hard drive to the quality of the memory.