Happy Holidays! - down with the flu and some thoughts =)

Happy holidays dear visitors and friends!

Today  is the night when most of us celebrate with the family and close friends,  sing along and gaze at the  tree with its light bulbs and  decorations, and hopefully some more gifts under its leaves! a new laptop?, a sleek new tablet computer, or perhaps a new video card for games =).

Some businesses still need to open their gates at least for some hours to cater to their customers and give some service, even if its just for half a day, and even if its a  saturday, we as computer salesmen and repairmen strive to fix any last minute detail with those computers that are to be gifted, or ones that santa will deliver in the early morning :O, and as always i was prepared for such task

pc gaming on a budget December 2011 - how to play the latest pc games for cheap

The following is a guide compiled based on  my experience with computer hardware parts available to me at the moment having checked local prices and online listings, better deals might be available to you, and this guide should be taken only as a heads up to what is worth buying AT LEAST.

Holy days are around the corner, and often its the time of the year when people often want to give  presents, from nifty expensive android tablet pcs, beautiful smart phones, plasma tv`s, gaming console system`s and computer system`s as well, and due to my line of work a lot of people visit me and ask me, what is a good computer that can play the latest games, but on a tight budget!

THE TOP OF THE LINE - everyone wants an AlienWare

Computer hardware stores have been around for years since the invention of the home friendly personal computers, better games started to flood the market, that demanded new video cards and powerful rigs, somewhere along the 90's there where a pletora of computer businesses, companies such as Falcon North West, Tiger direct,  AbsPc or cyberpowerinc to name a few, all had listing from cheap to the beefiest ones, and there  was a company that rose up with the depravity of offering the most expensive computer parts AlienWare, world renowned brand, would give computer gaming heaven if you could afford it! The company grew so much, that back in 2006  DELL bought Alienware. Think of that!

How to repair a CPU with bent pins - heatsink and cpu came loose during shipment!

Today i give you the story of a Pentium 4 478 with bent pins and how i was able to save it, all started when...

Shipping a computer 
A friend of mine that lives in another state, decided to send one of his unused computers back to one of his relatives, he reformatted and packaged all the discs and papers in a single box, the old Pentium 4 socket 478 HP case was wrapped in protective foam to ensure it would not get damaged during transport, and shipped it off expecting nothing to go wrong.

Something did go wrong

Upon arrival his relative noticed a funny rattle like sound coming from inside the box, and as the box was moved from side to side, it felt as tough there was something heavy "loose" inside,   beeing a care full person, the relative contacted my friend about the issue before trying to plug it on, to which he promptly asked to open the box and open the case door, and they where surprised to find "a big piece of metal with a fan, hanging from the inside of the computer, and the metal had a part full of copper pins all bent and warped"

AMD HyperTransport make sure its 1000mhz or higher! /too much work !

 THIS IS NOT AN OVERCLOCK GUIDE ITS A REMINDER TO CHECK YOUR HT AS IN SOME MOTHERBOARD IT COMES IN LOW SPEED SETTING AS DEFAULT

AMD's HyperTransport:

I wanted to venture fort into the subject of AMD and its hyper transport technology and how configuring its speed can mean a slow or fast computer
, but after doing a lot of tests and benchmarks i came up with a lot of unconclusive data and mixed results. in short you just gotta make sure its 1000mhz at least or higher! setting it lower does hinder performance, but beyond 1000mhz  you really cant tell the difference (only in some case specific situations) let me explain a  bit more.

FancyCache - How to use Ram as hard drive cache

Welcome to the last of these  ram caching mini series where i finally show you a great tool to further improve upon any windows caching system, as we saw in the  previous post here, we understand the improtance of using a newer operating system  such as 7 with loads of ram, so that everything is re read from ram, but if you are still reluctant to move on from xp  due to its small footprint, and have loads of ram to spare, you will love this program!

THIS IS WHAT FANCY CACHE CAN DO TO YOUR SYSTEM ITS AWESOME

Understanding how windows uses RAM - Why you Want Loads of it!

 A history Of Ram Caches, prefetcher and superfetch!

Ever since the dawn of computing random access memory (RAM) has always been a limiting factor, it determines how much information  the cpu can "juggle  in the air" to keep a program open and to display its contents, early on programs were made to fit specific ram requirements (not to mention much earlier you only had around 600kb of base system memory to work with!!) because RAM was never cheap, at around  100$ for 4 megabytes (yes MegaBytes), windows 1.0 came and demanded for more, these where the days where you could only open 2 applications at much, before windows notified you ran out of memory!

 You could only run as many programs that the memory could handle 

these two are too big for the system memory!

16GB of ram and How to Migrate Raid0 from one system to another (different chipsets/controllers)

DISCLAIMER: This guide is specific to newer motherboards that include  raid chipset in some or most of the sata ports, from both brands of AMD and NVIDIA, the success rate depends on many variables mainly the  hard drive interface controller and how well the operating system can deal with the swtich to another one (this resuslts in blue screens of death in few ocations, always have a back up of your data!)

I NEED MORE RAM! (8 is not enough!)
As you may remember on a previous post (double your speed with raid0) i told the tale of how i doubled the speed of my computer by adding together 2 hard drives and form a RAID 0 array, dividing the write times in half and increasing the read performance by two, i slapped 8 gigs of DDR2 ram to that computer and i was gold! resources available at all times... but having many open projects and a game by the side, really slowed down my system!

 need more ram!

New domain name and how to properly configure it! - A personal note

100+ FOLLOWERS - Thank you
Posting my experiences here on this site,  i never expected to have such response, i have visitors from all over the globe,  people seem to love what i have shared so far,  and  i have been given a little help from my sponsors as well, i realized i should thank you all for your support, something that encourages me so much and makes me smile :D

COMPUHENTO.COM : godaddy.com to the rescue
Well the time has come to roll up my sleeves and   take things a bit more serious.. nothing big of a change here, other than to continue to  give you what i have so far, i decided to change my webpage name to something shorter something unique, COMPUHENTO  a word that joints my rl nickname  and the computer acronim of what i have dedicated my life to.

Nvidia G84/G86 = Dead Laptops ( how to revive dead laptops)

Greetings and welcome back, today we venture into the world of reviving dead laptops due to the failure that was the G84 and G86 Chipset from nvidia, check it out here, you might be surprised on how many models from hp/compaq and many other companies are affected.

HOW WE GOT HERE

To recap a little, we saw last time, how Nvidia ventured forth into an unknown territory by utilizing a new and untested proccesing scheme that involved materials and bindings that technically operated at a given TDP, but ultimately  after the disaster and trough testing was discovered that function with a higher TDP, coupled with the unsufficient cooling solution provided by HP/Compaq and you have the recipe for disaster: A  Chipset/Video part  that heats up beyond its structural treshold and breaks down causing death upon its wake.

Nvidia G84/G86 = Dead Laptops Everywhere! (how to check and save your laptop) Part I

COMPUTERS - Smaller costs more!
Computers, Laptops, netbooks and most portable devices all share the same components but at a smaller scale, with  central proccesing units(CPU), storage solution, graphic proccesing units (GPU), screen for output, keyboard or tactile pad, and many other components that  work together in harmony for you pleasure! o.O

Manufacturing small scale electronics is a expensive business, and thus why laptops and small devices always seem to cost much more than their desktop counterparts, every year companies try to push the envelope and shrink down the manufacturing process, developing smaller and efficient parts that generate less heat and require less energy to function.

CHIPSET - the heart of all

Capacitors! - revive dead Video cards and Motherboards (and other electronics)

Disclaimer: while it is possible to repair power supply unit capacitors, just stay away from them and buy a new one!, they deal with high voltages and amperage, and  should not be tampered with ! this guide deals with low voltage capacitors!


Computers and electronics: We have made our life around them, and sometimes rely heavily on them, everything is fine and well until one day, when  you try to boot your computer, the fan noises are made, the hard drive spins to life, but there is no image on the monitor, this is possibly not a power supply issue, it might be bad ram, but if everything was well and running up to that moment, you might very well be looking into the eyes of death!. A dead Motherboard or Video card!!!  All is lost!abandon ship!

Last Part! - Hard Drives: How to certify a drive for good measure!

DISCLAIMER:
Even if you plow your hard drive trough all of these programs and get the green light on it, there is no stopping fate from making your drive die the next day, so back up often!
( 9000+ Visitors :D! ty)

Welcome back to this humble guide I hope you have enjoyed the insight on the programs that i use to test and certify  hard drives, this time we finally take a look at how to make sure a drive will perform reliably both in data preservation and  performance within windows!



HD TUNE  - Transfer rate measurement  / surface scan
http://www.hdtune.com/

PART 2 - Hard Drive Maintenance: fix a slow drive(and how some drives just cant be saved)

DISCLAIMER:
Resurfacing, Low level formatting and slow sector erasure will destroy any data on the drive, this guide assumes you have backups and are trying to reshape a slow drive, and even after doing all that is possible , some drives will still show signs of slowness and bad sectors due to uncorrectable physical damage to the surface, heads and/or arms. Always Verify Data Integrity before using a resurfaced drive!

Welcome Back today we take a look at some other awesome programs!


VICTORIA -  quick bad sector removal/destructive slow sector erases
http://hdd-911.com/
A program created on the motherland, Victoria comes as a dos solution to access drives directly for health and sector checkup, there is also a newer (4+) windows version that only runs on Windows XP, the program contains:

Hard Drive Maintenance: how to fix a slow hard drive(and bad sectors)PART 1

DISCLAIMER
As i previously mentioned, hard drives are prone to mechanical wear, and break down, when a drive fails it will be unable to spin up, move the heads in place, and make loud grinding scratchy noises and clicks, all signs of a dead or dying drive, and only hard drive forensics can help you in such case, this is not a guide to revive dead hard drives. This guide assumes you have full backups of your data.


DEFRAG VS REPAIRING SLOW/BAD SECTORS
In our daily computer use, we want our data written onto our hard drive in a single line, so that later its read in the same speedy fashion, the reality is that in order to provide read/write performance, big data files are laid and fragmented all over the hard drive, leading to a certain degree of delay when we request the file again. A hard drive Defrag will move big files in sequential order to prevent such delays, this does NOT fix slow or damaged sectors.

How to double the speed of your computer (RAID 0 + CLONE BACKUP)

We want fast computers! we want to press the start button and have our operating systems desktop in our screen within seconds, click on our folders and enjoy our music, pictures or home movies, open up our browser and visit our favorites!

But why do we have to wait for 40 seconds for our systems to be ready?, why does our system grind to a halt on the loading screen as if it was calculating quantum equations  in the background, we invest a few hundred dollars in 4 or 8 cores, 8 gigs of the fastest ram, and still we have to wait for our HARD DRIVES to catch up to speed? 

THE PROBLEM

How to install Windows 7 from USB (any version too!! in 4 easy steps)

oh hi!  nice to see you again :3 (revisited december 27 2011 small detail)

Have you ever had the need to install  windows 7 onto your computer only to find the dvd drive is dead, or your system is question has no dvd drive at all?, like all those new Net books for sale at around  100$ that only come with linux or some other kind of web browser interface ?

Well i am here to save the day! because i have been on the computer business for a long while, and i have been installing windows systems daily, and having to swap discs from system to system is a real hassle, the dvd's get scratched and customers often loose them, and i cant afford to buy every single windows DVD version  for every single customer.


-START LESSON-

To RefurBish or Not Refurbish! that is the question! (HARD DRIVES)

Oh hello there, so nice to see you again :D

You may have heard about REFURBISHED items which are basically items that have been reworked, fixed, re calibrated, re packaged in order to be sold once more to the consumer in an effort to re-cycle and re sell otherwise well and functioning product, Most of the times, since we like new and shiny and "un-handled" these products are cut  down in price, we have to make clear, these are not Used(mostly)  and worn out items, that you find in outlets, here is a little deeper explanation:

he is such a great sales man!

100% Cpu usage - Hardware Interrupt calls!

Oh boy do i have something on my hands right now,  a computer a compaq Presario sr1615la that right from the start of windows xp login screen, is slugish and has a 100% cpu utilization,  we ruled out any kind of virus and rootkit, after searching and searching for  every possible hidden culprit, i opted to use  ProcessExp, a nifty great tool to find what program is hoggin the CPU, turns out the program identifies a "Hardware interrupt calls"  procces at 99%, Installing a fresh copy of windows on the same hardware yields the same result!

At this age and day, an interrupt problem reminds me of the past, where you had to reserve and give IRQ's for special hardware, sound cards usually where IRQ5, network cards where IRQ 9 or 11, and video cards where 9 or 14, and if you happened to have two diferent hardware cards with the same IRQ, things  usualy did not work at all , or made fort a very unstable system, these days we dont need to fumble with any of that, since the motherboard and operating systems work on the PNP method "plug and play"

BACK UP YOUR DATA, Before your hard drive dies!

Ah computers, we have invested our dollars in them for gaming and or for work, and storing our information, those nifty pictures of your trip out of the country, the beautifull visages, mountain ranges and the memories with your loved ones, and all this can dissapear in a second!

You see, we often overlook the fragility of a hard drive, the magic that happens every time we boot up our system, how the drive heads float and glide across the disks surfaces on a small bead of air, how the magnetic fields are read, interpreted, in a well orchestrated fashion. time after time, without failure, a work of art, but things can always fail, and hard drives are not meant to work  perfectly forever!.

BRIEF HISTORY

Since the dawn of computing, computers where used to calculate data and get results, but  there was also the need to store information in a way that could be readable at a later time, the binary system has always been the way to go,  in the form of circuity inside the computer processors,  switches that have 2 states (binary), on and off, data is broken down in binary code, zeros and ones, and soon it was possible to store data, in the form of  "punch" cards, thick paper cards with holes in them to store a 1 (a hole) and a 0 (no hole), and soon in the form of magnetic media, a positive magnetic field for a 1 and negative field for a 0, magnetic tapes, magnetic disks, all you needed was head that reads and writes the magnetic field accordingly, and this method became the mainstream even to our days (flash memory media came to aid us, but more on that later)

Just as a magnetic head would send pulses of positive or negative energy along a  magnetic tape, the same method was applied, take the strip , lay it down and bend it to form a flat circle,  you got yourself a track!, now bunch up a lot of tracks together, and you have yourself the basic principle of  magnetic disk media, From the old 8" 1/2 , 5" 1/4 or  3" 1/2 floppy drives, up to metal hard disks,  a round plate surface full of tracks, in which you can store data with magnetic pulses.

WHERE IT FAILS

Why is my 1Gb video card so slow for games!?

More is better, right?  you might be surprised at what some vendors do to just sell cheap  slow parts!

(A brief explanation and history of video cards for better understanding)

Video cards have been with us since the dawn of computing, Old Eisa and Isa Video cards with 128KB of video ram to display ancient 320x240 8bit gray scale monochrome resolutions, those where the days!,  DOS was strong and Microsoft ventured into the world of Windows,  Suddenly, a whole new array of resolutions where available, but only if you possessed enough Video Ram to cough it up!

In order to display an image in your monitor, the system has to be able to hold the data (picture-bits) somewhere, to send the video signal to your monitor, you roughly need  around 2mb of video memory  to display a 640x480@32bit image, around 8Mb for 1280x1024@32bit and  probably  64Mb to display 1920x1080 resolution, calculations we can just overlook now a days, but its important to mention!

Games have always pushed the boundaries and needs of Video systems (as well as 3D CGI workstations)and soon came the games, video card brands, and Video algorithms to display better imagery in faster fashion, from Vga to Vesa modes to OpenGL , Glide and Microsoft's Direct3D, Brands like TRIDENT,ATI,  NVIDIA, S3, CIRRUS LOGIC, DIAMOND, ELSA, 3DFX and even Compaq! all trying to better the others, and  they all found out that in order to push the limits, the video cards needed to become a processor unit themselves (not just video memory for the CPU)

Greetings, a pc repairman stands before you, with over 20 years of experience, i have dealt with the most obscure and strange computer related problems(and solutions!) and im here to share the wealth!

Also over the years ive come to hear and see people follow strange myths and/or become confussed with publicity  unable to guess what parts better suit their needs.

Bear with me, as i slowly remeber some of my most strange cases! and their solutions :D