A Computer Virus Most Foul

As Perth’s top computer repair shop, we remove a lot of viruses from a lot of computers.
Some computer viruses are straight forward to clean, others are tenacious and then you have the Royal Pain In The Butt computer viruses.

Recently, we have noticed a marked trend towards malicious computer virus infections. Some computer viruses are happy to use your computer or laptop as a host for sending spam, others steal your contacts, others attempt to steal your identity and bank details etc.

Last week we had a battle royal with a previously unseen computer virus that defied all normal attempts to clean and remove. 

It’s a variation on what is known as the Encryption Virus but this time it’s a much harder nut to crack. If it is not possible to remove a virus from a computer cleanly (some turn septic during the cleaning process), then a fresh Windows build followed by a data transfer is the ultimate solution.

However the Encryption Virus is a particularly foul in that it encrypts EVERY file on the victim’s hard drive. This means that even when you copy the user’s files to a brand new Window’s installation, the files are locked, encrypted and totally useless.

I believe the asking price from the virus developer for unlocking the data is £150 to £200!!

We bang on about how vital a three generation backup strategy is and this is exactly why. Alas, as is the case with most consumers, they are not backed up.

In one case, we managed to retrieve a picture (file) from a digital camera and use that to decrypt the key by comparing the file from the camera with the encrypted file on the hard drive. That client was very very lucky as the hard drive contained the only digital photographs of their children.

Bullguard the internet security that we use and recommend comes with 5GB of online backup so really there is no excuse for not being protected with a backup.

If you are having computer problems, need some computer help or think that your computer has virus, then pop in for a chat. Our advice is free!

Thought Hairballs Were For Cats Not Computers

While working on gaming desktop we came across what can only be described as a computer hairball!!

Computer Hairball - not good

This is a large mouse so the hairball is chunky!

I've included a computer mouse in the image to give you a reference for the size of the hairball.

We removed the computer hairball from the front air in-take of the gaming desktop and no surprise that the gaming computer now runs significantly better in that it is now stable and the cooling fans are not running constantly at full revs.

So if your computer is a wee bit under the weather or just plain sick, bring it in to our computer repair shop in Perth for a free consultation.

Water Cooling For Gaming Computers

We like water cooling in gaming rigs for a whole host of reasons:
Cooling efficiency
Whisper quiet
Over clocking
Loads more

You can have all the water cooling possible in your gaming computer but if the cooling radiator looks like this

It's not going to work!

For a full range of water cooling gear for all modding & gaming builds, check the cooling section on our web store.

Treat Your Graphics Card With Respect!

A Graphical Tale of Woe

As keen gamers and computer engineers, we take a great deal of interest in anything that is special, cool, different or unusual.

As I have said before, a large part of the skill of a computer engineer is problem solving coupled with tenacity and determination to solve a computer problem.

Big J, a particularly large gaming rig which I have feature before in a blog post, was brought in as a non-boot. The owner of Big J told us that he kindly let his nephew have a shot on it one Saturday afternoon as it was a miserable day and his nephew had been nipping the owner’s head for a gaming session for a while.

So to set the scene, the gaming rig was functioning perfectly and all the nephew had to do was install his favourite computer game.

The Uncle returned later in the afternoon to discover the side panel off the gaming computer and the nephew reporting that it ‘just died’ while he was installing the computer game.

Nothing was spotted as being obviously wrong internally and indeed the nephew was correct in reporting that the gaming PC had in fact died.

Big J was brought into our computer repair workshop for examination. On test the computer was powering on, but refusing to display anything at all.

Memory tested and passed

The power supply was tested and passed

Processor was tested and fine

On a hunch, Donald our Chief Computer Engineer removed the twin graphics cards and replaced them with a lesser graphics card just to test the theory.

Damaged Twin SLI Grpahics Cards

Voila, the system booted so the problem was with either of the graphics cards.  A close surface inspection  of the computer graphic cards revealed nothing but then the eagle eyed Donald noted some damage to the DVI port as can been seen below.

Look closely 

Note that these very high performance gaming graphics cards have two DVI ports each so the Big J gaming computer has a total of four DVI ports.

Incredibly, four out of the four DVI ports were damaged beyond usability!

The nephew had been less than careful when attempting to connect Big J to the monitor and had mashed all of the ports!!

 With a bit of clever re-positioning, Donald managed to affect a cunning port repair which meant that the twin SLI graphics cards were still able to work as you only need one DVI out.

So the moral of this tale is never leave your pride & joy gaming computer unsupervised and be very very careful when connecting your DVI output cables!

Not wishing to blow our own trumpet, but it is rare to find a computer repairs workshop that has the skills to do such complicated work as required to move DVI ports on a high-end computer graphics card and the honesty not to just tell you that the cards are mashed beyond repair and that replacing them is the only option.

Of course, our on-line store carries a very wide selection of computer graphics cards from the very basic all the way to the very top end quad core graphics cards

What Happens When U Play Football Near A Laptop

The laptop in this video is less than 6 months old.

Watch the video:

Now make sure that your laptop is on your household insurance!

Back to School, College or University Laptops

Its only August, but the schools in Perthshire start back on the 14th of this month. The colleges and universities are not that far behind so perhaps it is time to start looking at getting things ready for the return.

It's a fact of the modern word and the education process, that students are expected to have access to a reasonable laptop or computer, broadband and a printer.

PC Solutions has the largest range of new and refurbished laptops and computers in Perthshire.

Back To School Laptops

The laptops start from only £149 inc VAT and go all the way up to the latest Core i7 with everything in-between.

All of our laptops come fully prepared, tested and updated. We also include a year's cover of the award winning Bullguard Internet Security as standard!

Feel free to pop in for a chat and free advice on a new laptop and don't forget our laptop trade in options

Our on-line store was almost everything that you will need to complement  your computer for the new term
  

A Very Fried Computer PSU

If Your Computer Smells of Smoke

A long standing client brought his non-booting desktop computer in yesterday.

The computer, the client explained 'been smelling of smoke for a while" but now it refused to boot.

A quick test confirmed the computer repair engineer's initial diagnosis that the power supply had failed.

However we were not prepared for the extent of the PSU failure which only became clear when we started the strip down / removal process.

A Fried PSU

Look closer:

The SATA channel has been melted down to the bare wire!!

We would have expected the other protection mechanisms to have been tripped long before this level of damage occurred. We are not fire experts but we honestly believe that this was very very close to starting a domestic fire.

The client was very lucky as his computer is now running perfectly and we suggested that he bought a lottery ticket as his luck is clearly in!

If you are having problems with your computer power supply or thinking about upgrading your PSU check out our full range of computer PSU's in our online store