A month ago I finished a big project, and rewarded myself with a new SSD for my aging laptop.  It's a little extravagant, but I get to humor myself that way.  Imagine the over-kill of a 6gb transfer speed idled down to a 1.5gb controller.  Fear not, this drive will me moving to the next laptop too!  

Last week my friend Pwajdeur was over, and I gave him my copy of Hiren's BootCD.  I did not realize how useful that CD is, so tonight I had to go back online and get the newest version and burn another copy for myself. 

This CD has everything you need to find out what's wrong with your busted computer.  In short order, Pwajdeur and I were able to find out that the memory on his system was toast.

So here's the link to a free download site to get your own copy.  Just download, and burn to a CD.  Then boot to the CD to access tons of diagnostics and tools.