Refurbished PCs

All the NickWorks Dell base units and monitors have now been sold. But I still have a few very good Stone machines available as cheap replacements when things go wrong. See the specifications and price.

Data recovery

When things go seriously wrong there may be no option but to replace your PC. The question always is, "what will happen to all my photos/emails/documents?". Hopefully you will have some backups (see the NickWorks discussion of backups) but luckily it is normally possible to recover all the files from your old disk, even if Windows won't run. The disk has to be removed and placed in an external enclosure, and then the files viewed and copied from another machine. There will be ownership and permission issues, as the new machine will not have any rights over the old files, but these issues can be overcome quite easily. Then it's a matter of putting the files back into the right places on the replacement machine.There is a Microsoft utility ("Windows Easy Transfer") to help with this.

DVD drive not working

A laptop's DVD drive stopped working - the device manager showed it as not working. Uninstalling and rebooting led back to the same situation.

A Microsoft "FixIt" failed - but creating a new registry subkey got it working:

 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Controller0\EnumDevice1 with value 1.
 
Contact NickWorks IT support for any problem - it can usually be fixed!!

WIndows activation

When a machine is reinstalled (see NickWorks Services), re-entering the product key should allow Windows to be activated. It requires that you install the right version of Windows to match the key - so before starting to reinstall, it is important to have these two pieces of information.

Every Windows PC should have a sticker on the case with this information on it - but it is sometimes missing or too faded to read (this happens a lot on laptops).

Luckily there are a few utilities that allow recovery of this information from the Windows registry. It's encrypted, so it can't be read directly.

I used ProduKey, which makes it quite easy. It can access the information on an external disk or USB key, so if Windows won't boot, you can still get the code, as long as the disk still functions.

If the code is barred by Microsoft, it could indicate that the installed version of Windows was from a suspect source.

Corrupted profile issues

I have seen this problem a couple of times: the user can't log in and gets a "The User Profile Service failed the logon" message. The cure is to swap the registry entries relating to the profile and its backup. 

But if the locked-out user is the only administrator there is a problem. On this laptop I had to

(1) Boot from the built in Windows repair (equivalent to booting from the Windows DVD) and start a command prompt.

(2) Run regedit to edit the registry to enable the built-in administrator account  (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/102552-built-administrator-enable-winre.html)

 (3) Log in with this account and fix the profile (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215)

Keyboard problems

An HP Mini 200 netbook is displaying problems - intermittently, none of the keys work except the vowels, which are displayed with accents. This behaviour continues when using the on-screen keyboard or an external USB keyboard. Conclusion - the Alt-Gr key is sticking down. Returning to HP under warranty did not get the repair done, as they claimed it had been subjected to liquid spillage (the owner insists it hadn't). The "liquid intrusion sensor" is alleged to be a white paper label inside the case.

A quote to replace the keyboard amounted to £70 - but simply removing the useless Alt-Gr key fixed the problem.

Cutting your losses

Today's laptop has strange problems that I have failed to explain. The Windows firewall service is missing. All downloads and attachments are falsely reported as infected and are deleted - though the machine is free of malware. I would love to spend the time to get to the bottom of this and find out why - but realistically, it is quicker to just reinstall!

Overheating

I have had two recent repair jobs which have been debilitating but easy to fix!

A Dell Dimension 5000 was shutting down a few minutes after starting up - and this was caused by complete blockage of the air intake holes. This model has a large slow-moving fan which draws air in through a large recessed vent in the front panel. The intake was totally blocked with dust, and on cleaning this out normal service was resumed.

Another desktop was shutting down seconds after powering up - and this was caused by the CPU heatsink and fan being dislodged.

Windows Update

Windows Update can be a frustrating thing - this PC was failing to update - I had to do  

Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > and then uncheck the “Enable memory protection to help mitigate online attacks” option.

Dell Optiplex 755

I have been setting up some Optiplex 755s and started to get machines which failed to install Windows XP. I had forgotten that you have to switch the SATA configuration from AHCI to IDE - the alternative would be to add SATA drivers during the install. Oh - and the machines had the BIOS locked and noone knows the password, so I had to remove the password jumper on the motherboard to get access!

Antivirus clash!

I have just serviced a very nice laptop - it should have been fast, but actually was so slow it was unusable. The problem turned out to be multiple antivirus programs running at the same time. Booting in safe mode and removing two of them fixed the problem!

Windows 8

Support for Windows XP ends on April 8^th 2014. This means that you need to upgrade to a later version by then, as after that date updates will become unavailable and the operating system will become unworkable.

Windows 8 is unlikely to be widely taken up in the business world and Windows 7 is the better choice. The equivalent end-of-support date for Windows 7 is 14/1/2020.

A license for Windows 7  costs around £85 per machine.

Wireless adaptor resets

A couple of people have reported recently that they need to keep resetting the wireless adapter on their laptop. This can be done by following the troubleshooter wizard, or the command-line utility DevCon could be used to make a little script to disable/reenable the wireless adapter, but it's annoying!  

Here are some of the suggestions for things to check/do:
1. Get the right drivers for the network adapter
2. Update router firmware, and try changing it to a different channel (if you have access to it)
3. Check for viruses and malware
4. Reset winsock
5. Make sure there are no conflicting wireless devices nearby (eg mobile phone)

It's also worth testing the machine on battery only and on the mains.

Controlling the sound

Someone asked me how to control a laptop's sound level without needing to press the function key / Fn button - not a very handy key combination if you're also trying to play music.

I looked up a utility to help with this - and it looks very helpful! It's called nircmd and seems to be able to do a whole range of things! WARNING - I have not tested this (yet).

 We can set up any Windows PC to have the sound controlled through any key we assign:

Download “nircmd.exe” from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

In a command window, type

nircmd.exe cmdshortcutkey "~%folder.desktop%" "Louder" "CTRL+SHIFT+M" changesysvolume 1000

nircmd.exe cmdshortcutkey "~%folder.desktop%" "Quiter" "CTRL+SHIFT+U" changesysvolume -1000

These commands will create 2 shortcuts on the desktop. The specified key combinations will increase or decrease the volume. Delete the shortcuts and it will remove the hot-key functions from the system.

Or we can make it mute/unmute the sound altogether with these:

nircmd.exe cmdshortcutkey "~%folder.desktop%" "Mute Volume" "CTRL+SHIFT+M" mutesysvolume 1 
nircmd.exe cmdshortcutkey "~%folder.desktop%" "Unmute Volume" "CTRL+SHIFT+U" mutesysvolume 0

There is also a utility called “volumouse” which allows us to set things up so that the mouse wheel acts as a volume control.

Service Pack 3

Windows XP Service Pack3 doesn't want to install on this PC that has been off for a while. It cannot access the registry keys that it needs to. Luckily there is a Microsoft Fixit (#50389) which sorts out the required permissions. After running this, SP3 installed OK.