PC TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE

WHEN A BAD ASS FAN AIN'T ENOUGH

For your CPU that is, for however high-tech or expensive a CPU cooling fan is dust kills all that dough you put into buying it. That’s a simple truth many forget to remember and they end up with burnt up CPU’s, literally. CPU’s tend to operate at a high temperature and can handle a maximum of around the boiling point of water or 100 Degrees Centigrade. More than that and components start to fry and eventually fail.

Though you wouldn’t see burnt CPU’s everyday, a component running hotter than usual can lead to mysterious pc crashes and problems such as intermittent errors that you could not diagnose. Take a peek inside of your casing and check from time to time to ensure you have a clean fan and cooling fins. Blow using dusters to clean them out(after you open the case and take it outside of course), refraining from using brushes that everybody uses for it can cause static damage.

CLEANING EXTERNAL CONNECTOR

These are the ports such as the USB, Video and others that usually hide at the back of your CPU unit. They do need attention from time to time and non-chlorinated contact cleaners will do the cleaning for you with little effort. Be sure to power down and unplug everything form the CPU unit. Leave the CPU unplugged for a few minutes and touch the casing to dissipate static electricity that can damage components.

Remember to purchase products that are designed for cleaning sensitive equipment (the term sensitive usually indicates expensive), but the effort and investment will surely be worth the effort. Apply the cleaner in bursts at the ports and allow to dry( which depends on the product so read the labels) and re-assemble your computer.

This cleaning process will solve intermittent USB connection and other problems that defy diagnosis so life becomes a little easier and computer usage more enjoyable, till the next crash.

SHOCKER

Ever gotten a painful jolt form your computer? Many have and they will tell you it hurts, really. Then a common cause may be an improperly grounded computer system or a failed grounding wire on your house’s electrical panel. One more cause is the nasty habit of people(techies) to take out the third prong of the power chord(the round one) that should ground the pc but may be non-existent in some homes.
You could get a power supply(or AVR/UPS) that can provide you with ground so you do not get shocked. One more cause of this problem may be a pending failure of one of your computer’s components even if you do have proper grounding at the plug.

UPS TROUBLE

A malfunctioning UPS can fail when needed or simply irritate you with constant beeping, a way for the built in electronics to tell you that something’s wrong. Many would take the unit in for repair but some daring (another word for advanced knowledge in electronics and the dangers of electricity) people can refurbish adefective UPS at a fraction of the cost. How could this be, well one of the most common area of concern is the battery/ies that stores electricity for use during unstable power or lack of it. The most common type used are sealed lead acid types that are still the cheapest ones around.
Remember, the innards of the UPS contains high-voltage current that can kill if you do not know what you are doing! Locate the battery packs and remove the positive and negative terminal connectors. Note down the model and type and get yourself replacements. Re-install and re-assemble the unit, ensuring polarities are correct and that you charge the unit prior to connecting your computer to it.
I cannot reiterate the danger so do be careful and if you do not know a thing or two of what you are about to do, DON”T RISK IT.

CPU FAILURE

If you experience frequent CPU failures and get feedback from the store that the power supply has blown. Try to get a larger capacity or higher rated power supply. You might have too many devices hooked up to the power supply (internal and externally) both of which take power from the same power supply if they have no individual power adapter. Say if you have a 300 or 400 watt power supply, try getting hold of a 500 watt or higher model and try to get the bit pricy one so it would last. Repetitive power supply failures can cause damage to the internal parts of your CPU and even the board itself which has built in fuses to protect the Microprocessor unit itself from such damage. If the board has also failed, you would have to get another board to transfer the cpu onto.

MALWARE REMOVAL AND PREVENTION ON THE PC

There are reasons you may have arrived at Malware Removal and Prevention. If you’re here to do a thorough system cleaning or a checkup, MRP will guide you through that process. If the computer is showing symptoms of infection: Popup ads, general sluggishness, or browser redirects, to a name a few, MRP will offer you a good chance at restoring your system to normalcy.

SCREECHING HARD DRIVE - INSTALLING NEW HARD DRIVE

If you do not have a secondary drive, better get hold of one fast but try to determine the type of the drive the system board supports (IDE, SCSI, ATA or SATA) so you buy the right one. If the drive type is no longer available (most areas have already phased out IDE drives being replaced by SATA drives), then you might be in for more of an overhaul rather than a troubleshooting expedition. A change in most of the parts may be necessary and the files that have to be transferred might be done on another computer which still supports your drive type or by the computer shop should you like them to do so(for a fee of course. Professional data retrieval would be too expensive for the ordinary PC and the data stored in it). Remove the plastic sheath or case of the new drive and check the jumper settings.





SCREECHING HARD DRIVE  RE- CONFIGURING THE SECONDARY DRIVE





Now, to make the secondary drive your primary drive (after you have transferred all necessary files to that said drive), open the casing and locate your hard drive. Don’t forget to discharge any static electricity by touching the casing for a few seconds to ground yourself discharging the offending static charge in your body. Turn the power off and remove all the cables from the rear and front of the casing. Unscrew the hard drives and try to find the master and slave which can be seen in the jumper settings near the drive connector, also disconnect the power supply from the drives. If you have managed to identify the master and slave drives, remove the failing drive and change the jumper setting of the slave to configure it into the master drive(this would be easier if the master and slave were both formatted with their own MBR’s or main boot records). Connect all necessary cables and power up your computer and begin the setup procedure of your OS. Once the OS is re-set-up, reinstall all applications, drivers and other programs you may need and you can now transfer the copied files to their rightful place for use.


SCREECHING HARD DRIVE DON'T COUNT ON SYSTEM
RESTORE POINTS





Don’t count on system restore for this one for it only works best for software errors and not for hardware failure. If you do not have a secondary hard disk installed, or you might not have enough space to house all your files and the OS in the drive you were left with, then sadly you have to get a new drive to augment or replace the drive that is about to fail considering the fact that the failing drive hasn’t seized up yet. If that were the case, you can curse all you want but say good bye to all your documents and important files whatever type they may be.




SCREECHING HARD DRIVE- MOVING OR COPYING THE FILES


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Even new drives can crash if there was a problem within the manufacturing process. They have been tested and tested again before delivery to the store but defects do get through the testing programs. If you happen to have more than one drive on your PC, that would be nice and would make the copy process easier. Just select all the files you need and copy them into a temporary folder where you can retrieve them later in the other drive once it is set up to boot as the primary drive. The primary or master drive is the one that has the operating system installed onto it which in many cases would be Windows.


WHAT IS DATA BACK- UP

Data backup is the act of ensuring your important information (which could be customer contact details for a business or cherished photos for a home user) isn’t only stored in a single place, which leaves it vulnerable to being lost through damage or theft. Since a backup system contains at least one copy of all important data, the risk of total data loss is minimized. And any data loss does not result in a total standstill of the business or heartache for the home user. Using the backup data, the system can be restored and normal service resumed.

Finding the right data backup solution can be confusing. It depends on what to backup, how to backup and what type of computer or network is being used. It might sometimes seem difficult to choose the right backup solution. Not because they are difficult to find, but because there are so many of them.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PATCHES AND UPDATE

Anti-virus software is effective as its most recent update because it is inherently reactive treating “known” threats. When you install anti-virus software, go to the vendor’s web site and update the program and virus definitions immediately and then turn on the auto update feature.
If you want to be ready for the next bad thing before your anti-virus signature can be updated, consider Zero-Day Protection.