Bristol and Bath Home Computers

Link: http://milsom.biz

Before I proceed I just want to point out that this disaster recovery is a last resort after a major drinks spillage in your computer.

The worst disaster to a notebook computer is a drinks spillage, a drinks spillage can destroy a notebook computer in minutes, when I have been asked to do a repair quote for drinks spillage in the past I have quoted for every board that has been touched by the liquid.

All liquid spilt into a notebook will destroy the notebook very quickly but the worst and most common being tea, coffee, squash and I even had a hot chocolate once, add to any of those liquids sugar and milk and this is guaranteed death, there is however one chance and it is a remote chance of recovery and that is to give it a bath.

If you have a spillage of any type you need to determine the best plan of action, as soon as the spillage is noticed turn off the notebook, it may already be too late but turn it off immediately, remove all removable components, Batteries, DVD, hard disk, keyboard if it is an easy to remove one, inspect them to see if they are damp if so clean with a little water and dry immediately.

So now you have a shell of a computer with all components missing, this is where the scary bit starts, find out where the spillage was if it is in the keyboard and the lower part or the display, if it is just the lower part it is easier to clean because there are more openings,

Please bare in mind this is only as a last resort and the computer is not to be replaced as an insurance claim.

You need to put the computer under the tap and ensure that the water flushes out all the contaminant, if coffee, sugar or milk is left on the circuit boards they will corrode in hours, it must be flushed out while the contaminant is still wet, if the contaminant dries on the circuit boards it will not be possible to remove even after dismantling the machine, as soon as you have flushed out all the contaminant stand the notebook on its side on the radiator, ensure it doesn’t get too hot and damage the plastics but you need to dry it out as quickly as possible, even water can damage your notebook if left for a small length of time.

DO NOT SWITCH ON AGAIN UNTIL IT IS TOTALLY DRY.

When you are sure it has dried out connect up the power, turn on and hope for the best, it is unlikely that there will be no damage, the life of the machine will be reduced but you may get a few months or years more use out of it, if it works OK add the external components such as batteries, hard disks and removable keyboards and try again.

When I have repaired computers under a service agreement liquid spillage was not covered under the maintenance agreement and was always chargeable, the times I went in and the machine was dripping with liquid and the customer wasn’t sure what the problem was, many were surprised when I ask how they hadn’t noticed half a pint of lager in there, I wonder how they didn’t know.

I had to look at an IBM notebook for a major life insurance company, the notebook had been run over by a BMW and I was asked to access the damage, needless to say it was a right off as it was banana shaped, the amazing thing was it was still working, the screen was cracked and funny colours but he was still using it even though it rocked on his desk.

Please remember this is a last resort kill or cure remedy and may make things worse, this should not be used if there is a small amount of liquid in which case it should be looked at immediately by an engineer, dismantled and cleaned with solvents, we can carry out and emergency decontamination procedure for £85 this will include immediate collection and return to our workshop for chemical cleansing (subject to engineer availability).

Visit our main website to arrange a visit, for the immediate service you need to contact us by phone 0117 9071966 to ensure immediate deployment of our duty engineer, please ask for immediate cleaning service.

Dangers inside computers.

There are few obvious dangers inside a computer base unit, in fact as an engineer your main worry is not to you as the engineer/owner but to the computer, you may wish to read my anti-static post that I wrote earlier.

Inside the computer base unit are low voltage circuits normally having a max voltage of 12v DC, most of the circuitry is 5v and the 12v supply generally for external components such as hard disks and CDROM drives.

You can touch the 12 volt rail and not even know it was live, the main danger inside a computer box is the PSU (Power Supply Unit) this is normally a switched mode power supply and comes as a sealed unit within the computer, most of the computer builders of today put units together and very few if any understand the principle behind them, this is not such a bad thing because the insides of the PSU can prove lethal even when disconnected for a length of time and is best left to the professional, I am able to fault find PSU’s to component level but it is not worth the time.

Provided the PSU is not opened the only real obvious danger is the metal edges of the case, when I started building computers the quality of the cases were a bit suspect and razor sharp edges were the norm, it was normal to draw blood building a computer, nowadays the build quality of the computer cases has improved no end and you can safely work inside most computers and in fact all the computers we supply, writing this post takes me back to the first computer I built, it was a 286 at an amazing 25Mhz and I remember trying to make the board fit inside the case bending and squeezing case bits and the system board to make it fit, you modern day system builders don’t know your born with the Lego like construction.

Monitors are another very real danger, do not put a plant pot on top, when you water the plant and the water overflows sparks are very likely , burns and death is a real possibility and before you ask yes I did have a customer who did this (She lived), there are very high voltages inside the monitor, even after being switched off for a long length of time, I can repair monitors to component level but I will never take the back off on a customer site.

Most printers now have a PSU as a sealed unit, the main danger inside a printer is trapping hands or catching hair, these are normally prevented by a “chicken switch” sorry another college term, that kills the power when the lid is lifted.
I remember working on a laser printer, not sure I think it was either a Panasonic, Data Products or a Kyocera, it was on the bench and I turned it around to work on it, the side panel was off and I shorted out the PSU with my hand, the PSU was a board that had the circuit side outwards and I had an imprint of the circuit board on my hand in little white blobs, needless to say the PSU blew up and the manufacturer fitted a plastic cover on previous models.

I remember when I was at college in our components lecture the lecturer Mr Goodall (if you read this thanks), as we were studying transistors advised us a way to bump off our family members, we were studying Germanium and Silicon transistors, this is as Germanium were leaving the market as more reliable silicon were being built, he told us that one of the doping agents in the transistors was Arsenic and that we could dip a few transistors into our victims cup of tea and apparently the effects of arsenic are accumulative and eventually they would pop their clogs of arsenic poisoning.

I have no idea if this is the case and he was very obviously joking about terminating people but that does lead to the theory that if this potentially lethal component is used in old and modern electronic the disposal of all electronics components must be very carefully considered.

There are millions of electronic components out there and many millions are breaking every day, although the quantity of arsenic and many other poisonous elements are minuscule the accumulative level must be huge, Im sure Intel and Texas Instruments don’t buy these toxic elements by the cup, I am not an expert and I will not pretend to be but supposing all these elements in the land fill sides along with mercury, cadmium and other battery elements from disposed of batteries break free from their respective cases and enters the water table there is a recipe for disaster and mass poisonings.

When I looked deeply into this problem, not from books but just by looking at the amount of batteries disposed of from discarded McDonalads toys, computer boards and normal every day batteries I decided to not chuck my batteries and electronic items in the bin but get them disposed of properly, I guess the council consider the dangers when they build a land fill site but I am not prepared to put the future of my family and generations to come at the mercy of cash strapped councils, I could plead ignorance and take the cheap easy route or I could take responsibility for my actions and do my best to ensure the safety of the people around me.

You need to pay people to dispose of old equipment but it has got to be worth it as one small step to saving the earth.

I would appreciate comments from anyone who can highlight any dangers mentioned in my above post.

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) monitors are different from the normal CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitors in the fact that the picture area is plastic as opposed to glass, we all know how much more durable glass is than plastic and that the CRT display can be cleaned by most household cleaners, provided there is no coating on the glass sometimes used to reduce glare there will be no problems.

Using a household cleaner on an LCD monitor can cause severe scratching and even cloud the display, the only remedy for this is to replace the whole monitor.
There are special chemicals cleaners to clean LCD monitors but these can be expensive and are totally unnecessary, the safest and cheapest way to clean an LCD monitor is with toilet tissue and water.

First get two pieces of toilet tissue wet one and wring out some of the water, it needs to be wet but not running to avoid water entering the display as it runs down the screen.
Apply a light pressure and quickly rub the damp paper over the whole area of the display.
Quickly before it dries use the dry piece of paper repeat and remove all the damp from the display, a very fast but light pressure movement works best.
You will have a nicely clean screen all over.
If there are persistent greasy stains such as finger prints you can add a small amount of household soap to the damp paper and repeat the above process.

In the event of a very stubborn mark or pen mark do not apply more pressure to the area, instead repeat the cleaning method above more regularly, there is a chance that pen can not be removed.

It is best to not touch LCD displays but the above process will safely remove any residue should visibility be impaired.

I have recently located this facility to aid the cleaning of your screen, please note this is not a total solution but should be treated as an aid, for more information please click here.

Disclaimer
I hate these but its got to be said.
I have performed this cleaning procedure on thousands of customers displays and never had any problems or caused any damage, we can not guarantee that the procedure will be followed correctly and not cause damage to the display, we supply this information at face value and can not be held responsible if any damage is caused.

Link: http://milsom.biz

Like a responsible company starting back in the IT sector mainstream I have researched my market sector for pricing, competition and terms of service, I have noticed that many companies offer a no fix no fee term.

I am really having trouble comprehending that a company in the IT industry can not fix a problem, I have worked for Kalamazoo, and Specialist Computer Centres as computer and computer server engineers for many years, repairing all sorts of IT equipment, including servers, laser printers, monitors, etc. these companies have been subject to the BSI assessment on a regular basis, me being a part of the team had to follow the quality procedures set down as a requirement for BSI, I never had the option to say I cant fix it cya, I had to fix it full stop.

I am aware that there are people out there that profess to be computer engineers after they have built there own system at home and it has worked, I have even know the like to have been employed as engineers by some companies, there is however a lot of difference between a computer engineer who built a computer at home and an engineer that has been trained by the likes of Harley West (London), Spring IT (Birmingham), Toshiba (Camberley) and IBM somewhere I cant remember. The experience gained by myself and my colleagues in the field for many years have so much more relevance for a quick turnaround and guaranteed quality and safe repair of your Information Technology equipment.

This does sound awful I am sure that most of the companies out there have experience just as valuable as ours here at Bristol and Bath Home Computers but it is just the thought of not fixing something does not compute in my head.

When you call out an engineer you want an engineer that can fix your problem, you don’t want a company that has a get out clause as a selling point.

Defragmenting your hard drive

Most people in the computer industry recommend you to defragment your hard disk to solve so many problems, the truth is that defragmenting is a good idea but it will make little if any noticeable difference to your computer.

I have seen so many description of what defragmenting is, does, or means very few seem to be consistent.

In simple terms defragmenting a drive takes files and puts them in one single area of the hard disk.

What are fragmented files
When you save a file to a hard disk it puts it in the free space at the end of the already saved data, it will continue to do this until the hard disk is full or you delete some files, when you delete a file from the hard disk it leaves a space, when you delete more files it leaves more spaces, depending on when the file was saved determines where the spaces are left, if you delete an early file the space will be towards the beginning of the hard disk.
This is fine the computer can cope with that, you will have your current data and some spaces where existing files were
This is where the problems start, if you want to save a new file where does it stick it? a/ at the end b/ in the big spaces
The answer is none of those it puts the file in the first available space, for sake of example, supposing your new file is 100k and the file space left by the old deleted file is 10K, what the computer operating system does is put 10k in the first space, it also leaves a token saying where the rest of the file is, if the next space is 10k it will stick another 10k in there and another token until all the spaces are taken or the file is saved.
This is not a big problem until you realise how many times you delete files and save new ones, also loading a file editing it and saving it again changes its size so it sticks the remainder of that edited file in the next space or if the file is smaller it creates a small space.

What defragmenting does
Defragmenting a hard disk takes the files and moves them to the end of the hard disk, it then writes it back to the beginning when there is enough room so the file is in one continuous section of the hard disk, the effect is that the hard disk heads don’t need to move so far to retrieve the data, the file no longer has need of a token to say where the next file and therefore saving a small amount of space.

The benefits of defragmenting
If all the file is in one area the hard disk can simply retrieve the data from one area and move one space to get the next instead of jumping from one area to another, this will save wear on the hard disk and therefore prolong its mechanical life.

The myth about defragmenting
You will get many people, even some self appointed computer professionals saying that defragmenting will make a noticeable difference, defragmenting will make a difference to your hard disk but is not going to make any noticeable difference to you.

The hard disk is the slowest critical part of your computer, hard disks can wizz around at up to 15,000 times a minute, the slow part is the head movement, the heads are physical and need to physically move to get the information from the disk platters, the heads can move very quickly but no where near as quick as the data when it has been retrieved, the drive interface and cable can handle any speed that the heads can take the data from the platters, in fact most of the time the interface is waiting for the data from the heads.
Because of this the hard disk very often has a cache this is a temporary store of hard disk data in RAM (Random Access Memory), the drive electronics looks at the data requested and will grab a chunk of data near to where the request was from in anticipation that that will be called next, if it is called next it does not need to move the heads but will send the data directly from the RAM cache, this makes the hard disk as fast as the cache on the hard disk.
The cache loads files and puts it all in one area of the RAM so it effectively defrags as it retrieves it, when the data is requested by the computer it is sent as a single continuous data file.

Defragmenting can save your hard disk a lot of work, defragging every month is not required but recommended to prolong the life of your equipment.

Defgragmenting can also be used to help diagnose faults with your computer.