Just wanted to let you know why I still hang on to my PS/2 mice and keyboards (especially the keyboard).
Many of my clients upgrade their PS/2 mouse and keyboard. They either want to go with a USB mouse and keyboard setup or with the even more popular wireless mouse and keyboard setup. Now I’m all for an upgrade, but as a computer tech I’ve made the following observation.
Some BIOS will only work with a PS/2 keyboard. Many times USB and wireless keyboards are not compatible with certain motherboards during the “pre windows” booting phase. The USB or wirelass keyboard will start to function only when Windows is fully loaded.
At times you can make a change in the BIOS by going into your BIOS peripherals menu and turning on the USB keyboard/mouse feature, but not always. Sometimes plugging your USB keyboard into the first (or another) USB port will do the trick. But often you will just have to keep plugging that old PS/2 keyboard into the PS/2 port in order access your BIOS settings, Safe Mode, Login Screen, etc.
Professor Randy says:Don’t throw out those “old” PS/2 mice and keyboards! Sooner or later they will come in handy with certain types of motherboard BIOS. You’ll be glad that you still have them!
A while back I upgraded my old laptop hard drive. My laptop is the Toshiba Satellite L355-S7812 which originally came with a very small & slow 200GB, 4200RPM SATA drive. I upgraded to a 500 GB, 5400RPM SATA and the procedure was a “piece of cake” thanks to the method that you will see in the two videos.
At the time I had been wanting to try out the Apricorn USB Hard Drive Data Transfer Upgrade Kitfor a while, and I can say that I was quite impressed with the results. There are many ways to upgrade a laptop hard drive but this method is one of the easiest and most effective. How cool – it’s like having a new laptop!!
Please enjoy two great video tutorials: One by Tom Merritt from his CNET days here, and the other here below:
Professor Randy says:You don’t need to buy a new machine! Give your laptop more speed and more space by using this easy and quick hard drive upgrade method!
The other day a client called me and told me that his computer was shutting down every time that he tried to play his Hoyle Card Games CD-ROM disc.
I went over to his house and sure enough, every time that the CD-ROM drive started to spin up the computer would shut down and then reboot. When not using the CD-ROM drive the computer was apparently functioning OK.
I concluded that the clients old PSU was no longer able to handle the increased power drain from the spinning CD-ROM. I replaced the defective PSU with this one, and all was well once again!
My client and his wife were now able to play their Hoyle Card games. Very happy!!
Professor Randy says:When repairing computers, never underestimate the importance of a good Power Supply!
Professor Randy quotes Mother Teresa:“Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is too precious, do not destroy it. Life is life, fight for it.”
A client called me up and told me that she no longer wanted her eMachines T5048 desktop. She said that she couldn’t stand the loud fan noise any longer as it was driving her crazy!
When I got to her house I certainly could hear that the fan was indeed extremely loud! But there was no need to get rid of the desktop. Here is the solution:
1) Close out any open applications and restart the computer.
2) As the machine boots up (at the eMachines logo), press F2 (to enter the BIOS).
3) Once you are in the BIOS, navigate (use the keyboard directional arrows) to the Exit Tab.
4) Under the Exit Tab, choose “Load Optimal Defaults“. When you are asked to confirm, select “Y” (for “yes“).
Many of my computer repair jobs involve the hard drive in one way or another. Lately I’ve been seeing about three hard drive failures per week. In a previous post I named two hard drive tools that I use frequently. In this post I would like to tell you about five great hard drive tools that will both predict and prevent hard drive failure. Great stuff!
1) CrystalDiskInfo: CrystalDiskInfo is a HDD health monitoring utility. It displays basic HDD information, monitors S.M.A.R.T. values and disk temperature. I use this tool on every computer that I repair!
2)HD Tune: HD Tune is a hard disk utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive’s performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more. A very valuable tool to have in your tool kit!
3)HDD Health: HDD Health is a full-featured failure-prediction agent for machines using Windows 95, 98, NT, Me, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. Sitting in the system tray, it monitors hard disks and alerts you to impending failure. The program uses Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) built into all new hard disks, and can predict failures on your hard drives. A host of alerting features include email, local pop-up messages, net messages, and event logging, while using no system resources.
4)HDDScan: HDDScan is a freeware utility for hard drive diagnostics (RAID arrays, Flash USB and SSD drives are also supported). The program can test storage device for errors (Bad-blocks and bad sectors), show S.M.A.R.T. attributes and change some HDD parameters such as AAM, APM, etc. HDDScan can be useful for performing the regular “health test” for your drive and predicting its degradation, so you will be able to prevent data loss and backup your files before you will have to contact the data recovery service. Additionally, software can be used as the hard disk temperature monitor and reading/writing benchmark – performance graph is displayed for every test.
5)GSmartControl: An awesome hard disk drive health inspection tool! GSmartControl is a graphical user interface smart control tool for querying and controlling SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data on modern hard disk drives. It allows you to inspect the drive’s SMART data to determine its health, as well as run various tests on it.
Professor Randy says:Being able to diagnose a failing hard drive is a must as a computer repair tech. Believe me, if you can save your clients hard drive and data you’ll have a customer for life. These five tools will help you do just that!
I got a computer from a client yesterday and when I started to repair it, I couldn’t access hardly any of the tools in Control Panel (Windows XP). I kept getting the error message:
Obviously I was missing the rundll.exe process. Rundll32.exe is a process that allows dynamic link libraries (DLLs) to be executed. Many system DLLs contain entry points for external use. These include the control panel, as well as Shell32.dll, which allows you to bring up windows such as the “Open with…” dialog. This process is a system process that is essential to the system’s proper operation.
I don’t really know how this file was lost (often malware can “knock it out”), but I knew that I had to get it back onto the computer if I wanted to proceed with the “fix”. Here is what I did:
1) I went into the c:\windows\system32\dllcache folder and found the rundll.exe file.
2) I copied the rundll.exe file and pasted it into the c:\windows\system32 folder (this is where it should be by default, this is where you want it to be).
3) I rebooted the machine.
4) I was no longer in “.dll hell”, everything worked great and I was able to access Control Panel and complete the “fix”.
Professor Randy says:Don’t go to .dll hell! Replace any missing .dll files and you’ll be in heaven!
