A Laptop Brought Back From The Dead

A client sent a friend to drop in a laptop to us for repair.

Unfortunately, the friend took the laptop to another computer repair shop who declared the laptop as unrepairable. Apparently this make and model are well known for this fault.

So when the client came to us to collect said dead laptop, he has rather surprised to learn that we knew nothing about his laptop as every machine in logged and a receipt issued.

The client called his friend from the shop and with a bit of deduction, we worked out which of the other computer repair shops had it. The client went round and collected the dead laptop.

As we provide a No Fix No Fee laptop repairs service, the client had nothing to loose by letting us check the laptop out.

With one of the largest computer and laptop repairs facilities in Perthshire, we have very good computer repair equipment and engineers.

In less than a week, the motherboard fault was repaired and a delighted client re-united with his once again fully functioning laptop.

So the moral of this is to always get a second opinion and use a computer repair company who offer a no risk repair service.

Instead of writing off a very nice Dell Windows 7 laptop worth probably £350 to £400, it was fixed for less that £100!

Cable Management

I was shocked to open this system, built by a competitor, to find the cable management such a mess.

10 mins is all it should take to address the cable management correctly and not leave a rats' nest like this.

Check out some of our other blog posts to see the attention that we give to computer systems and their cable management

How Our Computer Engineers Are Coping With The Heat

Our computer repairs facility in Perth is full of computers and laptops that are in the process of being fixed, upgraded or viruses removed.

Part of these processes require that the computers are running for most of the time and as you know they output a fair amount of heat.

There are currently 14 machines running generating a large amount of heat into an already hot workshop.

Alex and Donald have come up with an innovative way to try and aide their personal cooling:

2012 Olympics Virus and Spam

Just been warned that the Olympic E mail virus is doing it's rounds again. If you receive an E mail titled "OLYMPIC TORCH" Do NOT open it.


There will be a whole host of Olympic related scams and viruses so be warned, keep your computer updated and if in doubt, throw any dodgy email out!!


If you have any questions, feel free to call us for free advice.


In the worst case, if your computer does get infected, we provide a very efficient virus removal service 

Over Heating Desktop Computer

A client brought their desktop in with the complaint that it was running very slow and kept crashing so the sick desktop computer was booked in for our of our Best Value Computer Health Checks

After we had cleaned the system up, removed all the viruses, sorted out the Registry etc etc, we turned our attention to the crashing.

Quite simply, the carpet fluff has accumulated over the years and was blocking the front air intake vents rather effectively

Air flow for cooling is vital for a computer to operate normally

Time Lapse Video of a Custom Gaming PC Being Born

As dedicated gaming computer engineers, we ensure that every computer that we build, is finished to the highest standards that we take a pride in delivering.

We were recently commissioned to design and build an all round general purpose gaming system but focused on graphics performance.

To achieve the graphics performance we selected the second fastest single chip graphics card currently available which is the Asus Radeon 7970.

With the graphics sorted, CPU was the next part of the selection process. An Intel Core i5 2500K was used because offered the best price performance ratio ie Bang for Buck!

The power supply is 700w OCZ modular unit as a modular power unit allows more precise cable management. Good cable management is a sign of a quality build.

As well as graphics performance, boot time was the second priority so the the gaming PC would be ready for game play as soon as possible.

In this particular instance, our computer engineers, installed a 120 GB Kingston SSD as home to Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Secondary storage is dealt with by a fast 1 TD hard drive where the games and other user files will be stored, leaving the SSD for the OS and hence a very fast boot time.

The gaming case used was the Antec 302 which has a sweet under mother board fan mounting. The 20mm behind the motherboard mounting tray makes the cable management easier and is therefore useful to those who do cable management correctly.

Interesting to note that the Antec 302 gaming case has holes on the top panel for water cooling ready for the plumbing if you decided to go for the full monty in water cooling.

Now that you have read this far and thank you for doing so, check out this really cool time lapse video of the physical build:

Wireless Network Problems

If you are experiencing wireless connection problems with your laptop or your desktop, it might be that you need to consider using a high gain wireless adapter.

Modern laptops are designed to look stylish but sometimes the quest for looks puts the wireless antennae in such a place that it only works in the presence of a very strong signal from the router.

Using a high gain wireless adapter may, in certain circumstances, assist with connection and speed.

For example we stock the TP-Link High Gain USB wireless adapter in our computer shop in Perth.

At just £19.99 inc VAT, this is a very cheap way to add wireless to your desktop or to help a laptop that is struggling to connect to a wireless router.

 

Hard Drive Failure Computer Virus

Another busy start to the week in the laptop repairs section of our computer workshop in Perth.

Several cases of an older computer virus that seems to have been updated to get past most main stream internet security solutions have been dropped of this morning.

The infection first makes it's appearance after a seemingly normal Shutdown or Reboot. After starting as normal, a box will suddenly pop up claiming that your hard drive is about to fail as shown in this screen shot:

Hard Drive Failure Virus Screen Shot

This virus also hides all your files and most of your icons which has the effect of inducing panic in most people!


By the time you see this, your computer or laptop is infected and your anti virus / internet security has been compromised .

At this point, we are just starting to determine the best method for removing this virus and will update this entry once the virus removal method has been formalised.

As we take great care with protecting your data during the virus removal process, all your data will be safe.

Virus Removal Update

After a bit of work, and we now have quite a few 'live' subjects to work on,

The virus removal process has been successfully formalised without data loss.

New Computer Virus Police Warning Variant

The workshop has been working hard to cope with the recent influx of virus infected computers.

Most common infection at the moment is the fake Police Warning virus that pretends to be from some of the leading UK police forces such as The Metropolitan, Strathclyde, Yorkshire and others.

The fake police warning virus makes itself evident by displaying this false demand for money:

This pesky virus stops all downloads and also blocks loading anything loading from the CD/DVD drive or USB.

It also stops the computer booting into Safe Mode which is what most folk will try and do as the firt step in the virus removal process

As this virus has bi-passed the anti-virus protection to infect the machine, it's highly unlikely that your current internet security will be able to clean your machine.

Unless you have the specialist knowledge, it's probably best to take it to a virus removal specialist

As an update, over the weekend, a new variant which we have named PC EU has started infecting computers. 

The PC EU Virus seems to prefer XP hosts and is a real pain to remove but PC Solutions has developed a method to clean it from XP. Vista and Windows 7 computers.

If you are infected, you might want to consider our Best Value Computer Health Check which includes a year's Bullguard Internet Security for just £59.99.

We give free advice on all aspects of computers and laptops so feel free to call us or pop in

Trolling the Boss

Our computer engineers are competitive by nature and when you add two of the computer repair engineers are avid computer gamers, then you have a very very competitive environment.

We enjoy having a laugh and ragging each other but we are particularly proud of the new heights we recently reached trolling The Boss.

The Boss is a fairly laid back guy who gives as good as he gets, but he'll have to go some to beat these:

One afternoon while he was busy, we created this scarecrow out of his motor bike gear:

PC Solutions Scarecrow

Our Boss always parks his bike within site of the shop so it is very difficult to 'do' anything to the bike.

However, one recent afternoon he was called away, leaving his bike parked on a very busy street and un-guarded

Remember that the bike is parked in a public space:

It must have sat like this for about 3 hours!

The Boss has not said much about these so we are watching our backs!