PC Repairs

Terry · Post by **Terry** » Fri May 04, 2007 6:40 pm

Hi all,

I know this is not BX stuff, but I think it might be useful.

I have my own sole trader business fixing PC's (and Apples) for domestic and small business customers locally. Keeps me busy, in pipe tobacco and the dogs fed!

If any of you have PC problem, if you want to pm me a description of the problem, and/or a phone number, I'll get back to you as soon as I can and hone it down to something identifable. I'll go through my 10,000 answer data base of Win 95, 98, ME 2000 & XP problems and try to tell you how to sort it out. Vista - can't help at the moment, no one in the techie business knows enough about it yet, but we will soon.

My way of saying thanks for all the help you guys are giving me.

Terry

MULLEY · Post by **MULLEY** » Fri May 04, 2007 9:36 pm

Thats very genours of you Terry, i think PC's are less reliable than the BX

Terry · Post by **Terry** » Fri May 04, 2007 9:57 pm

Too right mate, that's why my wife and I both have Apple Macs. In my business, some small business clients depend on my computers being utterly reliable.

But...PCs keep me in work.

BX's- never had a serious problem with any of mine. Just kept them serviced, in good nick and drove them hard. First sh1t car I had was the C5. Couldn't believe all the things that went wrong, and £400 for a 12000 mile dealer service!!!

Generous, not really, I'm not losing business because I only work a 20 mile radius of home. Besides, my local PC shop (he hates me) charges £80 hour for on site work! I daren't charge anything like that. But I still make a living.

So, got a PC problem, give me a pm or email and I'll call you back soonest.

Thanks mate

Terry

stuart_hedges · Post by **stuart_hedges** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:03 pm

I can't seem to find the "any" key on my keyboard. Can you tell me where it is? I need to press it to continue.

MULLEY · Post by **MULLEY** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:06 pm

Nice one, perhaps you could solve my query.

I recently had a virus, little bugger, got rid of it, but it had in the meantime gotten rid of my task manager, so when i press ctrl, alt, delete i get a window popping up with a nice big red circle with a cross in it saying "Task manager has been disable by your administrator".

Any ideas on how to get it back?

I am running XP Pro.

Cheers

DavidRutherford · Post by **DavidRutherford** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:14 pm

Stuart.... in the same way that you have to press f1 to continue after no keyboard has been detected? always makes me larf.

Terry... That's a fantastic offer, and I'm sure many members will be most appreciative.

How's your knowledge of GNU/Linux based OS?

Terry · Post by **Terry** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:18 pm

David

I don't know much about Linux, except some years ago I couldn't make Red Hat make any sense.

However, my stepson Richard, he's doing much the same thing as me but in a different part of the country, is something of an authority on Linux. And what he doesn't know I'm sure we can find out on the private techie forums we both belong to.

Terry

DavidRutherford · Post by **DavidRutherford** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:27 pm

That's very kind of you, and something I may well take you up on in the future, as have given up on Micro$soft, and run Slackware on various machines (including a web-server running apache) and am probably a little out of my depth. The problem with many Linux-based forums is that they need a level of understanding somewhat greater than I have.

Terry · Post by **Terry** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:45 pm

That's true enough, David. Linux GNU terminology is so vastly different from what we're used to with MS.

You're welcome to take up the offer, whenever.

Philip Chidlow · Post by **Philip Chidlow** » Fri May 04, 2007 11:27 pm

We are an Apple Mac family and have been since 1991... but my daughter now wants a PC for ostensibly school stuff (but more likely MSN!) - any 'brands' I should be wary of - I'm looking at Dell and Fujitsu-Seimens and Toshiba. All OK?

BTW Thanks for offering your help. It's appreciated.

MULLEY · Post by **MULLEY** » Fri May 04, 2007 11:29 pm

I like Dell stuff, seem to be good quality for a decent price & pretty reliable as well. Dont know what anyone else thinks?

Terry · Post by **Terry** » Sat May 05, 2007 9:30 am

Phillip....thanks for the post. The answer is a long one but it's what I tell my clients.

Apple Mac eh? Finally went over myself after 3 PC's and a server got the Nyxem virus 18 months ago. Should have made the change much earlier.

PC's. There's a couple of areas to be wary of, if you love your wallet as I love mine.

First -steer clear of all machines sold in supermarkets at cut price. They are always machines with poor quality components sold under a recognised brand, HP Acer etc, but they are not what they appear to be. I see a lot of them. They are built to last just beyond the 1 year warranty, but many don't survive that long. One I looked at was only 2 weeks old when the processor failed. Data recovery etc for the cient cost him £100. At that point better he had bought a full priced Acer from a recognised dealer.

Second. Steer clear of PC World. They're basically thieves. Even a minor software glitch will cost you £70 to put it across the counter and as much again to get it back. I know, I get a lot of machines PC World have tried to fix, but their spotty teen aged 'technicians' haven't got a clue!I love PC World, they're so good for my business.

Brands. I specify computer systems for small businesses and consumer use. I reccommend Dell, or a custom build by my step son, depending on the use of the machine. He does the high end machines, does them well because he doesn't want any warranty calls from me.

Dell are a good all round brand, fairly well built and of all the machines I, and my colleagues in a loose network of UK technicians see, getting a Dell on the bench is a rarity. I've got a 5 year old Dell on the bench now from a Parish Council. Running a little slow...not the PC problem, just they haven't defragged etc

If it's for your daughter, how about a Dell laptop. Basic, but very capable models start at around £350. As a matter of fact I'm getting one for the business. Hardware repairs on a laptop cost more than a desktop because they take longer to get apart. But they are portable, and a bit cool, a big thing with youngsters.

Only problem area with Dell is the warranties. Return to base warranties go to Ireland and you're responsible for carriage and insurance both ways. Machine could be out of your hands for a month and more. I always reccommend a 90 day warranty (free with machine) and tell the client I'll service it for them. Yes, good for business, but practical for the client too. If you buy a better warranty, Dell make their money on replacing components, at your expense, and often these components don't need replacing! Most PC problems these days are software related, so contact me, or another PC tech in your area. It's cheaper and more effective than a Dell warranty.

Operating system. I know Vista is new, and cool, and....but it's basically cr*p. Technicians don't know enough about it yet, MS haven't released enough technical data for us to service Vista effectively, and you have to go with a high end Vista (Ultimate) to get the expected Aeroglass displays. Ultimate is expensive! Also, any pre-Vista software will struggle to run on Vista, so you'll loose many software functions.

Dell have recently gone back to offering XP due to world wide customer demand. My advice would be to specify XP until Vista is improved (2-3 years) MS are withdrawing support for XP in Jan 2008, but people like me can keep it running years beyond that. One client has a Win 95 machine I keep running for him!

OK I did say it was a long answer. Have a look at Dell.co.uk, they often have offers on. I think they're still offering a Dimension 521 machine at around £250...formerly £450. Andy, Dell send me a newsletter every other week so Ill keep my eyes open.

One last thought. If it's word processing and MSN your daughter is after, I believe you can get a converter between Apple Mac and Windows. I'll look into it. That way you may be able to keep the family 'Apple.'

Just contact me if you want to know anything else.

Terry

DavidRutherford · Post by **DavidRutherford** » Sat May 05, 2007 10:57 am

Just to add my 2-penneth worth on laptops.

I have a High-end Dell laptop bought about 5 years ago. It's still a very good machine, but the Toshiba laptop I have from circa 1997 is an even better machine. For ruggedness, and mechanical build quality, the Toshiba has the Dell beaten.

Plus I like the fact that Toshiba will (without any problem at all) tell you everything the machine was shipped with. Trying to get that information out of Dell is pretty much impossible.

I can't agree more with Terry about PC world. I worked in 2 for a few months as a rep for Canon (NOT for PC world, just in one) and the level of understanding of the staff was shocking. They cater to a market, sure... in the same way that McDonalds do.

And as for Windows. Just remember:

Terry · Post by **Terry** » Sat May 05, 2007 2:36 pm

Phillip....try this for a converter for MSN and iChat etc

http://adiumx.com/

Terry

stuart_hedges · Post by **stuart_hedges** » Sat May 05, 2007 11:50 pm

Ooooh David. I'm just experimenting with Knoppix and Ubuntu - trying to see if I can ditch Windows for good. This machine absolutely FLIES under Knoppix, but the jury's still out on various other issues. We will see. For example, it runs extremely slowly when playing music - slower than XP, whereas it's considerably faster when I'm not playing music. I'm sure this can be fixed but I don't know enough about Linux yet to know where to start.

Dell I don't like, purely through recent experience. We have three Dell PCs at work, all two years old - mine, my boss', and one of the student machines - and they all run MUCH slower than they ought to given their spec. No idea why. I've scanned them all for viruses and spyware (with a variety of tools) deleted a ton of unnecessary files and defragged them. Still as slow as my old Tosh laptop.

My old Toshiba laptop, circa 2002, was a very rugged machine; it finally died a couple of months ago after a very hard life. It's hard drive will live on - I've bought a USB external enclosure for it to increase the drive space on my "new" machine which is a bit limited.

I'm very happy with my current Compaq Presario 5000 tower - it's got a "Designed for Windows ME" sticker on it so I assume it dates from about 2000-2002 but it has had XP (legally) installed on it and runs very nicely.

Windows ME, by the way, is Satan's own operating system. Two of the student machines at work are running on it and they work around 60% of the time. If we're lucky. Once they're up they're reasonably stable, but they don't like to boot up - or shut down.

Philip, I use GAIM as a chat client on Linux. I believe it's available for the Mac - have a google for it! It's free and your daughter can use it for MSN. It's actually a smarter piece of software than msn messenger, anyway. And for word-processing etc, install OpenOffice for true filesharing between MS, Mac and Linux.

Sorry, rambling. Tired and pissed. Hic.