Yes, you can use a Live image of Ubuntu to diagnose several problems in you HDD (no matter what OS you have installed there). The only thing that matters is the Operating System that is installed has been shutdown properly (no hibernation) 

For HDD problems you can use gsmartcontrol. 

Boot from Live CD/DVD/USB of Ubuntu and select "Try Ubuntu". Then open a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and issue the following commands 

sudo apt-get install gsmartcontrol 


Then run in terminal 

gksudo gsmartcontrol 


Select your HDD and check the attributes. 



If you see any red marked text you will understand the failure of HDD. 

For RAM problems you can use a Live image and memtest86+ 

See here how : Memtest with Ubuntu 12.04 live CD

Can I use Ubuntu to diagnose hard drive or RAM problems in Windows?
I need to represent a GeoTIFF file in a VC++ separate window where I can see the TIFF image and when the mouse is moved it display the geographic latitude and longitude. If I display a TIFF, before converting to GeoTIFF file, whit the sentence "img.display()" I can see the pixel image's value and the pixel number (row, column). Is it possible? I'm noob and I have no experience. Also I'm using libgeotiff in my program. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks.
