Computertech LLC | Computer Repair & Service | Medford Oregon » Blog

Defective Hard Drive Week

Admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:22:45 +0000

Talk about a lot of bad luck recently for these clients. We have been seeing an increasing amount of bad controllers and sectors, not just from old computers either. Seagate & Samsung this week are the problem causers. We have been able to get around bad sectors, grabbing 99% of the data off. The controllers on the other-hand are a different story.

Hard Drives range around 60-$120 depending on the size and interface. Can’t stress enough how important it is to backup your important data. What would you do if you lost all your files in the blink of an eye? Some people have better “Luck” with their drives. Lasting them a good 10 years. For some, 6 months is all they got.

This week we have been seeing a bunch of 2 year old, defective Seagates. Some older Samsungs say their good-byes. Hitachi’s old deskstar’s failing as usual.

Back to our recovery process…

Busy Quick Post | Week Summary

Admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:31:01 +0000

Gotta pump out these machines!

This week was mainly virus removals and blue screens. Lot of time spent doing diagnostics this week. Also had a few laptops came in with heat issues which is very common. Replaced a couple heat-sinks, screens, keyboards for laptops too.

Had charter come out today because of some phone/internet issues. Was bad firmware on the modem & got a brand new one out of it. Was a quick fix for a little downtime. So far charter has been great for us. Probably because we are a business though, we pay a good chunk of money.

Overall was a good week. Kept busy. We are going to be moving one of our part time employee’s (Joe) to full time. We are excited to say that. Hes a great addition to this company! Mmm… Pizza…

Cool Open Source Software

Admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:21:04 +0000

Sure is nice to run into software gems here and there. Free software that for the most part is regularly updated. At home I run a Linux router, and a media center machine. Both have all free software that keep it up. Probably the most popular open source software you have heard of is Mozilla. Another one is Ubuntu, the free operating system.

I like looking at free alternatives, and when I do, most of the time it is open source. If you would like to take a look at some, head off to http://sourceforge.net/. They have a lot of software there, and a very easy to browse website.

That’s all for now, just a quick post. Looks like some scans are finishing, time to finish some virus removals.

Friday! The end of our week.

Admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:37:44 +0000

The weekend is almost here, I can smell it! OK, maybe I can’t smell it but you get the idea. Normally on Fridays here at the business its a bit chaotic, but its also the day we order food in for the office. I hear Pizza hut is coming today, stuffed crust…. Mmm….

This is the day we have to pump out the computers before we are unable to work on them for 2 days. Most people need their computers the day before they brought them in, so we are always rushing. That is one thing that sets us apart though from the other guys, were quick. Though my guess is that some of these shops have a lot of machines to work on. We have a steady flow going on where we are always working. Business is good considering the economy.

This week overall was good. We were kept busy, made a bunch of people happy and generated quite a few more customers. Hoping for a busy next week. I think I heard the pizza man…

Slow Week – PC Performance Wise

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:23:10 +0000

Seems like this was the week for clients to bring in their 8-10 year old machines. Surprisingly all of them had been upgraded from Windows 98 or Millennium Edition, to Windows XP. You could hear the hard drives in those machines across the office.

The clients just wanted us to tune them up, and possibly upgrade the memory. We always tell our customers that with a machine of that age, there is a high chance that their hard drive is going to start to fail (if it is not already). Long story short, throwing more money into this machine might be a bad idea. Same answer for all, just need the machine to get by for another couple months. With the economy like it is, I can understand that.

Day later, and maybe an additional stick of memory, machines were working better than ones twice the specs that just hit our bench. Their prices were $50, $75 if they needed some more RAM. They were very happy with the speed when we showed them running on our bench. Then we told them they could donate those machines to a museum when they were done with them. All joking aside… We love to make our customers smile, hopefully a laugh out of them too.

I remember when I wasn’t spoiled with so much computer gear, I had whatever my parents handed down to me. They got the job done, slowly but I couldn’t complain. I ran those computers to the grown.

It’s About Time

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:40:59 +0000

Thought it would be a good time to start throwing up some random yet Computertech related blogs.

Discussions about whats going on with the business. Maybe some tech news every once and a while. What type of machines we are getting. Will try to keep a few blogs a week, hopefully with some useful information.

This website is powered by a very popular blogging management system called WordPress. Might as well take advantage of that.

No related posts.