A D.O.A. Computer

          A coworker has been mentioning that his computer would not boot up any more and it was giving fatal disk error messages. I said I fixed another coworker’s computer a few weeks before and that I could look at his to find out if I can repair it (for a fee of course). On our way home from work, I followed him and picked up two Dell computers that were not working. When I got home, I took out the newer one, removed the battery, discharged any remaining power left, plugged it in, then turned it on. Each and every time I tried this, the message I got was: no bootable hard drive found. I looked up that error message on the internet and most if not all said that the hard drive was most likely dead. Not wanting to give up so easily, I wanted to try other things, but I had to go to bed because I had to return to work the next night. When I woke up in the afternoon, I swapped the hard drive with one of my empty drives which was recognized by the BIOS. So that means the computer was still ok but the hard drive it came with wasn’t being recognized by the system. I also inserted some old operating system disks and they all launched (I aborted the process midway). As a last option to find out if the hard drive was still salvageable, I attached it to an external drive enclosure with a USB connection and connected it to my own computer. My computer tried to install a driver but did not succeed in recognizing the broken hard drive. I finally decided at that point that the drive was deader than a doornail. If another computer cannot even read the drive, then it’s impossible to even try to format and partition it. The drive was DBA (dead before arrival) and nothing else could be done with it. I could tell my coworker to find a shovel so he can bury the drive in his backyard. Cause of death: unknown.

                I said two Dell computers right? Well as far as the other one, I still have to find out what’s wrong with it as of this writing. I might work on it tomorrow on my day off.

                Okay, so the next day, I did the same preliminary removing and discharging of the battery on the second computer. I turned it on and it stopped midway through the boot process and asked me to strike F2 or F12, so I did the F2. It continued booting after that. Other than being slow, I didn’t see any error messages or anything wrong with it. I had to leave it to do my stationary bike workout and when I came back, it had gone to sleep. When I turned it back on, a familiar name came up in the log in process. I suddenly remembered that I had worked on this computer about two years before where I had to clean it up of spy ware and viruses (virii?). At that time, I optimized it so it would work faster. It’s really an outdated computer which only has 256 megabytes of memory, the type that isn’t manufactured any more, so it could not be upgraded. It also came with only a 60 gigabyte hard drive. Oh, my! I did the usual Windows XP updates which took a couple of days due to the slowness of the processor and the lack of memory. Then I ran Ccleaner to eliminate unneeded files and repair the registry. When I talked to the owner, she said the computer would not boot, however I couldn’t duplicate the problem. I warm booted and cold booted several times while it was connected to the power cord without any problems. It was until I reattached the battery when I noticed what the owner was talking about. It would not boot at all but just hang to the point where it asks you to strike F2 or F12. That was the AHA! moment. When I detached the battery, the computer had no problems booting. I searched the internet for causes of this problem but other than a question posted in a message board, there were no answers to be found. Why did this happen? Heck if I know. It could be worn out contacts between the battery and the computer which interferes with the whole system, or it could be because it’s really old. At least I found the cause of the problem even though I don’t have an answer for it. Other than that and in spite of it’s age and slowness (kinda like me with running and walking), it’s still fully functional as long as it’s plugged in. I don’t know if the owner will have the patience to wait for programs to load and webpages to open though.

                As a follow up regarding the newer Dell, I talked to the owner and suggested that he contact the company to see if he can purchase a DVD disk of Windows 7 because the system didn’t come with a disk like most computers do nowadays. Since the hard drive was dead, the built in recovery mode was no longer accessible and he didn’t create a system recovery disk nor backed up his computer. Dell should only be charging a nominal fee for the disk, and the owner can buy a new hard drive to reinstall Windows 7. Unfortunately, all his saved data is gone. Oh, I almost forgot. Before I finally gave up on the damaged hard drive, I placed it in the freezer then tried to use it again. That technique failed too. Just as a side note, I have used that technique before to recover data from a failing external hard drive. I managed to recover most of it although it took several freezings and thawings

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Restore a Friend’s Computer? Am I Nuts?!

Please bear with me because this is going to be a long one, but not as long as it took me to attempt a fix.

When I offered to look at my coworkers’ netbook to see what was wrong with it, little did I know the extent of its problems, and that it would take me a couple of days to fix it instead of what I thought would be about half an hour. Surely, I just need to turn off system restore, run a virus scan, then turn system restore back on, right? So I turned the computer on and it booted to what appeared to be a regular desktop. So far so good. My coworker said he wasn’t able to connect to the internet anymore. After checking to see if I was connected to wi-fi, I clicked on Internet Explorer. Nothing happened. Just to make sure I didn’t misclick, I tried it again, but still no dice. I tried clicking on the Safari browser but the system could not find it, and other programs didn’t launch either. Let me just enumerate what other things I tried:

1.       Ran CCleaner to fix and clean up the registry – did not fix the problem.

2.       Ran AVG antivirus – found 1 virus and 5 Trojan horses, but did not fix the problem.

3.       Booted from BIOS and went to Safe Mode – did not fix the problem.

4.       Booted from BIOS and tried Last Known Good Configuration – did not fix the problem.

5.       Last option was to run ACER Erecovery Management which would have restored the computer to its original factory settings. Program would not launch.

6.       Reinstalled all drivers – did not fix the problem.

Most of the time, Windows indicated that there were missing and corrupted files. I saved the owner’s documents to a flash drive and called him in the morning to tell him I might not be able to fix the computer but would like to try one more thing, and that was to load up my old Windows XP Professional to see if it would be able to restore the missing files using the recovery console from the disk. The computer itself didn’t come with a disk as most systems do now. Not only that, it doesn’t have a DVD/CD drive. How can I even try loading up my old Windows XP Pro if the netbook doesn’t come with a DVD/CD reader? It just so happened that I had an external one. So I tried that and all I ended up with was the BSOD (blue screen of death) with an error message saying there was something missing from the hard drive. Maybe the second time would be a charm but still no cigar. 

Oh my, I was getting in way too deep and it was becoming a challenge. I may have to erase the whole hard drive and do a clean install of the operating system, but of course the netbook didn’t come with an installation disk. It was supposed to be stored in the aforementioned ACER Erecovery Management which wouldn’t load up. Here were the next steps I took to restore the darn netbook all of which took a lot of time:

1.       Formatted the hard drive.

2.       Used a DOS program from a CD I had to check the disk for errors and if any data was recoverable.

3.       Partitioned the disk.

4.       Tried a clean install of Windows XP Professional – unsuccessful, still giving me BSOD.

5.       Tried to run ACER Erecovery from a flash drive using DOS – unsuccessful.

6.       Tried to install my old Windows Vista – unsuccessful, system was not compatible.

7.       Tried installing Windows 7 – 32 bit – unsuccessful, system incompatible.

8.       Tried Windows 7 Starter from my own Asus netbook. Disk can only be used for my computer and would not install in others.

9.       Finally I tried Ubuntu (Linux) Operating System which I had used briefly a few years back. It installed, but for those who don’t know how to navigate that system (meaning me), it’s difficult to do things the way you are used to in Windows or Mac systems. At least installing Ubuntu told me that the hard drive was still usable.

10.   Uninstalled Ubuntu.

Next was trying to find a free Windows XP operating system on the web. After looking at several message boards and websites, I couldn’t find one. You would have to kowtow to Microsoft and buy a new one. However, a YouTube video mentioning XP popped up after a Google search but I didn’t think anything would come out of it. Since I was almost at my wit’s end and ready to give up, I watched the video to find out if it had any suggestions. The guy said he had an unrestricted Windows XP that didn’t need a validation code. Well, what do I have to lose? I downloaded his file, thinking that if it was a virus, it couldn’t do any worse than a netbook that already doesn’t work. I did a virus scan on the file first, no problems detected, so it was time to burn an image to a CD. By the way, in case a virus or Trojan horse was hidden in the downloaded Windows XP, I used an old computer to handle it. Since I’m not too familiar about burning an ISO image to a CD, I had to research that too, but it would have to come the next day. Come morning, I was finally able to copy the ISO image to a CD so I could try to install it on the netbook. By this time, the early morning of my day off had flitted away and I still had to do my workout. I went out for a run/walk before proceeding further.

When I got back, it was time to try to install the operating system. I inserted the CD in the external drive, kept my fingers crossed, then saw the programs starting to load into the netbook’s hard drive. I kept hoping that it wouldn’t stop and abort the installation like it did when I tried my XP Professional, Vista, and Windows 7. Well, what do you know but the darn thing installed completely! I was so elated to finally see a desktop! Windows indicated that it needed to be registered or else the trial installation would expire in 30 days. I tried to register but couldn’t go online. Darn, another setback! Well of course I couldn’t go online because the computer was missing drivers for its wireless and wired LAN, video, audio, built in camera, etc. In other words, all drivers, ok?! I had to download all of those from the ACER website at another computer and put them on a flash drive, then copied them to the netbook. I installed all the drivers and was finally able to get on the internet. When I tried to register the operating system, I hit another roadblock. Microsoft asked for an activation code because the one that supposedly came with the downloaded XP didn’t work anymore. Microsoft must have found out about this bootleg copy and blocked it. There was one more thing I could try and if that didn’t work, I would suggest to the owner of the computer to buy a new and legal operating system. I looked at the bottom of the computer to find the Microsoft label with activation code exclusive for that system, typed it into the Microsoft activation website, held my breath, and lo and behold, Microsoft accepted it!!! I now had a fully operational system! First things first, I downloaded an antivirus program from AVG, installed it, then I hit another wall. It wouldn’t install because the basic operating system was outdated. Time to do a system update which took another few hours until reaching the latest SP3 version of Windows XP. After all that, I was finally able to install the antivirus software. As a last step, I copied the owner’s documents and pictures from my flash drive back to the restored netbook after scanning them for viruses.

Oh my! A mistakenly thought of 30 minute job turned out to be a two day affair. The virus and Trojan horses that I found did what they were supposed to and did it very well. But so did I. It just took longer than expected. I called my friend and told him briefly what I had to go through to get his computer working again, and that it was ready for pick up. He said he was already considering buying a new one after I told him a couple of days back that I might not be able to repair the netbook. He also offered to pay me for the repair.  Here is my dilemma. How much should I ask for? Can I now put a shingle outside my door offering computer repair services for a fee?

By the way, I saved a copy of that downloaded operating system so if you need it, let me know, but you would need to have a legal activation code, of course. This process is probably easier in Windows XP but not in Vista and 7 because of their stricter activation process. For now, I have faced the challenge and won!

Later on, I’ll tell you about computer problems of my own which happened a couple of weeks ago.

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Computer Audio Lag Problem

During the week before New Year’s Day, the audio on my laptop began to lag when I play a video or music file. I couldn’t figure out what was causing it. At first I thought I was using up a lot of resources so much so that the processor couldn’t catch up, or I got a virus or spyware. My second guess was that I had a bad sound card. After doing some diagnostics to check for the above mentioned suspected problems, everything appeared to be in good working order. The problem didn’t stop so I did some searching on the web for a solution, which took a few hours, and when I found it, it was totally unexpected.

 A sound lag caused by the wireless network adapter? Have you even heard of anything like it? What’s up with that? What I found was a single message board thread that mentioned disabling the wireless network adapter to correct the problem. When I tried that technique, the audio lag disappeared. When I enabled the adapter again, the problem returned, so now I have it permanently disabled. Not that I needed it anyway since I’ve been using the built in network interface card (NIC) with a CAT-5 cable connected to the router. What I found out while searching for a solution, was that you can purchase a USB sound card as a replacement for a damaged one in case you don’t feel like digging into the innards of a computer, especially if it’s a laptop. As far as a replacement for a bad wireless network adapter? Well, most of us already know that you can get a USB one too.

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Computer Frustration

Computers are at times so quirky, fickle, and unpredictable. On Saturday my Uncle called me so many times asking questions about his computer that I started answering my phone “tech support, how may I help you?”. He was having problems getting on the internet again because his computer was not connecting with the wireless router even though he moved the router closer. Well it turns out the USB dongle receiver had detached from the computer. Not knowing this, Verizon advised him to just hard wire the DSL modem to the computer’s Ethernet connection. That should have taken care of the problem, but nooooo…He called me again to ask about this and I told him to turn off the modem for about a minute, then turn it back on. Still no luck. I thought maybe there was a brief interruption of service in his area so I advised him to wait about an hour and try again. An hour or so passes by and I get another call saying there was still no internet connection. I was out of ideas so I looked it up on the internet and called my Uncle back to give him step by step directions. Turn off the modem, unplug it from the electric socket, turn off the computer, plug the modem, turn it on, start up the computer, and BAM! The heavens parted and the internet came down and showed itself to my Uncle.

On Sunday I had computer problems of my own. I started up my back up laptop so I can update the antivirus software and Microsoft Windows. However, while the computer would connect to the router, it could not connect to the internet. Despite several Microsoft suggestions in the Help and Support section of Windows Vista on how to fix the problem, still no cigar. So I tried something that Microsoft did not suggest. I turned off the DSL modem, turned off the wireless router, waited a minute, then turned everything back on again. Problem solved.

My co-worker just bought a new computer and will be getting a wireless router soon, and she needs help. Noel’s tech support at your service, ma’am.

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