Someone I know called me and wants me to figure out what's wrong with her computer. She thinks it's the motherboard but I haven't taken a look at the system to know what's wrong. What I want to know is, is there a Live CD Distro that has tools to check the hardware or a stand-alone cd, similar to memtest86, that will check all the hardware.

I have memtest86 and am currently downloading knoppix to see if I can figure anything out with that.

Also any advice on system testing and diagnostics would be nice, I've never tried using Linux to find out what's wrong with a system.

All I can really say is I use Knoppix whenever I need to troubleshoot a system.

There's also HELIX and FIRE.

Also, if it's not a whitebox, the manufacturer's website may have a bootable diagnostics disk you can d/l.

There's also UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD), which has a lot of hardware diagnostic software including those from specific manufacturer's.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Here's a screenshot of your choices at the bootup screen.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/graphics/screenshot.gif

Peace V

I always use UBCD which cuiq mentioned too. It's great.