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Antivirus update and computer checkup at Kenilworth in Warwickshire

This afternoon we on Ferndale Drive at Kenilworth in Warwickshire, we are here to do some maintenance on an old Desktop Computer running Windows XP and a Netbook PC connected to a BT Infinity Wireless Router.

On the Desktop Computer we updated the antivirus to a current Version , reinstalled the wireless Adaptor and checked the startup files and Edited the Registry.

Its worth noting that on installations of BT Infinity that I come across with the Router sat on top of the Openreach Modem seem to generate a lot more heat and appear to get speed issues so I would recommend that the modem is wall mounted to combat this or at least separate on the area that they are situated in.

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Harddisc data recovery at Leamington spa

Today we are in Leamington Spa at APNA Partaap Driving School (07855)791060, to Attempt a data recovery on an out of warranty Western digital harddrive.
The harddrive was dead with no power and the customer happened to have a spare identical drive so we swapped the control board which surprisingly was the correct board and gained power to the drive,
Unfortunately this then showed us the read arm was broken some how as it made a clattering noise when starting up.
The only way to recover this drive is with expensive specialist equipment.
So the customer has been referred to www.apextechnology.co.uk

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Onsite computer repair Leamington PC running slow

This morning i spent an hour cleaning up a computer on the Welsh Road between Cubbington and Offchurch.
It had an update software from Macrovision running and this was holding a large percentage of the computers resources, Slowing the PC down and increasing the fan noise.
We disabled the updater and various other applications and left the Dell computer running well.

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Kenilworth Router Trouble,Apple Mac at Henley in Arden and Laptop Repair in Wootton Wawen

At Kenilworth in the morning to sort out an adsl wireless router , and help a little with google web page search stuff with @suecablephoto www.suecablephotography.co.uk .
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Then the afternoon in Henley in Arden first setting up an Apple Mac with a virtual Windows using VMware Fusion happy to say that’s easier to do since i first set one up a good few years ago.

Followed by a trip to Yew Tree Farm Shop  http://www.yewtreefarmshop.com/index.php/yew-tree-farm/  at Wootton Wawen to perform minor surgery to a dell laptop computer by disable a misbehaving mouse pointer.

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HP Laptop Data Recovery Leamington Spa

This Morning we have a dead Hewlett Packard laptop with course work for university required for the following week.

It appears that the main board on this HP Laptop has died and the cost and time scale for repair would be to much and to long.

so we have removed the drive and transfered the data to a spare laptop that the customer can use until they purchase a new machine smiles all round.

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Sky sending out spam letters

Out at Whitnash today and it would appear that Sky are actually sending out letters warning about spam to there customers, But unfortunately they are basing the information on the reported ip address which changes if the user has unplugged the power to the router, as it happens on this computer the customer has unplugged the router on a regular basis.

We checked the customers machine and did find and remove rootkit virus , this is a virus that attaches it’s self to a main system file and can be pretty hard to find, also we have to change the password on the customers hotmail account it would seem the password had been stolen some how.

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Virus update and other computer maintenance in Leamington Spa

This Morning we are at Leamington performing a check up on a couple of computers one desktop and one laptop. The desktop is pretty good just needed an update to the antivirus program and the HP printer scanner software loading to correct a scanner issue. The laptop has been very lucky i guess not used to much as it had no antivirus installed this was rectified and the machine given a malware clean up.

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Setup Apple Macbook Pro with Wireless HP Laserjet

2nd job of the day is in the working units at The Mill on Mill Lane, Little Shrewley near Hatton here we have a HP Laserjet wireless Laserjet to install and make work correctly over the wireless network with an Apple Macbook Pro also to add to the fun it is using Sage accountant inside Parallels with Windows XP running virtually. this was all setup and tested much to the customers relief she had been using as left by another computer person with it connected via usb leads which i have to add looked dangerous.

 

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Computer dead no power

This morning i have a computer in Warwick with no power getting to the machine. After checking the fuses (by the way its almost never the fuses or the power switch) and the mains , We put  a new power supply unit in to the machine and tested it , This was all that was needed on this machine but a simular set of faults are apparent when the motherboard, processor or memory simm boards have a fault.

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Aol Wireless Setup

Phew last job of the day we are now in Lillington Between Leamington Spa and Cubbington . We are here to setup a new router on an aol broadband system, The old router is a BT one that looks like its been used for 6 years or more one of the original ones aol provided when it first launched broadband. still we managed to find all the details and set up a netgear wireless router in its place.

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Compaq PC not Booting

For the 3rd job of the day we are at Milverton in Leamington Spa for this one we had a Compaq PC with powerlights but no screen for this one we just needed to clean the contacts on the video and memory cards then reseat the processor.

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Broadband Trouble

Last job of the day is at Barford the customer has had trouble connecting to the internet, its a BT Home Hub router so we reset and it’s all back up and working, going to keep an eye on this one if it happens again i guess the router is over heating and needs replacing.
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Laptop Data Recovery

The next job is also in Kenilworth is to retrieve data from a broken laptop (To Expensive to repair as most likley needs a replacement Motherboard) and transfer to a new laptop all data recovered and a very happy customer.

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Computer Clean up in Kenilworth

First job Today is at Kenilworth Cleaning up a Hewlett Packard PC removing data and games and Setting up an email account. on this one as there was no data to keep we went straight to the emergency recovery partition and wiped the machine it was running very slow before the wipe after running like new and just needed the correct drivers for the added wireless adapter loading and a new email address for the new user.

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Hp Scanner trouble

In Leamington Spa this morning to fix a broken Hewlett Packard multifunction printer the scanner is not working correctly so we downloaded the latest driver from HP and installed this fixed that issue and a few other tweaks to keep the machine running nicely.

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Computer Backup System at Leamington Spa

This morning we are in North Leamington to put in place a backup system for a basic external USB harddrive for this we are using the free download from microsoft called synctoy, The reason im using this here is that it is pretty easy to use and does not take to long because it only copies updated files.

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Data recovery in Wellesbourne

This afternoon i am on Grange Gardens in Wellesbourne to see a computer that is giving a blue screen of death and rebooting. To be honest the machine is fairly aged but the data is important so we booted in to recovery console and attempted to read the drive this resulted in the “Drive can not be enumerated” error message and we then attempted to run a check disk on the harddrive, this is a 50/50 situation and takes a good 60 to 90 minutes to complete but as the data was urgent we tried it and suceeded.The important thing to remember is that although it was working straight after there still might be an issue with the hardrive so we left the customer backing up his data to an external hardrive.

UPDATE as is the case in murphy’s law 2 weeks after we did this the computer died again but the customer was happy due to the fact his data had been saved and he had taken on board the warning and updated his backup each time he used.

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Profile error on Microsoft Windows Vista at Wolston in Warwickshire

This afternoon we are at Wolston in Warwickshire working for Dental Chrome Systems of Coventry. We are here to repair a laptop computer with a “Profile Error” on boot up this machine is running Microsoft Vista and had just been running some updates the night before the error had occurred. We ran system restore and took it back to the point before the updates and got the machine working properly again, then we made sure the internet security was up to date, reinstalled the updates and tested by rebooted a few times, The machine is still working.

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Dead Computer in Warwick Gates

Good Morning, Today we are starting on a Desktop PC at Warwickgates. This PC was dead with no power so first of all we tried a new Power Supply Unit which resulted in no change so at this point we changed tactic and removed the video card and memory boards gave them a clean and retested still the same no power, next was to reseat the processor this fixed the machine and it was able to run. (if it had not worked it could have been a faulty memory stick processor or even the mother board and because of the age would probably have been uneconomic to repair).

Although the machine was now working this was not the end as it seemed some one had been playing on less reputable sites and had filled the machine with malware so much so that the machine ran like an old 286( the PC was running extremely slow), so we cleaned up the machine and got it running much better.

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Wireless Trouble in Warwick

In warwick today my only job is to reset the settings on a Belkin Router, then make a desktop PC work with it the first problem is its running Windows XP and its existing Wireless Card does not cope with WPA security, so we disabled the original Wireless Card and added a new Wireless USB adaptor that supports XP. all tested and working with all devices.

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Broadband Trouble in Kenilworth

My Second job for today is in Kenilworth the issue is that the router shows a link to the exchange but unable to connect, on all my previous troubles of this kind it has been the password Corrupted at the Internet Service Provider, on this one how ever it is the router that was at fault, so we replaced the ADSL Modem with a new Wireless ADSL Router.

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Wireless Trouble at Kenilworth

Next today we are in Kenilworth to fix a Netgear ADSL Router Problem the router appears to be working fine but the details for the admin are missing so we reset the Router to defaults and put the original settings back in taking care to write the details in to a safe area should we need to go check the router again.
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Odd Windows 7 Registry Error

This morning we are at Leamington Spa and have a Dell Desktop PC with a registry error on boot up, This appears to have been caused by a McAfee internet security upgrade going wrong, on this one we had to restore the system to an earlier date, run the windows updates  untill all up to date then reinstall the Mc Afee upgrade as downloaded from the internet .

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Installing a Wireless Bridge Access Point System in Leamington Spa

This Morning we are in North Leamington installing a Wireless Bridge system of Access Points, The main objective of this is to share the Buildings Internet connection on the first floor with a room in the cellar(mainly to be used with a building wide Sonos music system), We managed to accomplish this using only 2 access points one which has to be wired to the main router and the other in a strategic location in the cellar on route to the room requiring access.

The first attempt at this failed due to the signal interference so after a rethink we relocated the second access point to a room on the Ground floor this appears to be working well.