Monthly Archives: April 2007

warped gigabyte GA-8ie800 motherboard

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer calls, saying his computer won’t start… no beeps, no messages on the screen, just the usual lights at the front of the box.

I take a look, and soon start removing components to try to isolate the problem. I eventually narrow it down to either the CPU or the motherboard… The MOBO has no bulging capacitors, so there is nothing obvious.

I have to take the PC back to the office for more investigation.

I try a different CPU, but no luck.

I put the original CPU back, and suddenly It all starts working again.

It works for about 1 hour, then suddenly stops working again.

I swap motherboards (although XP will probably struggle with the different MOBO’s.

After removing the old ga-8ie800 MOBO and celeron 2.2GHz CPU, I happen to glance at the MOBO while I hold the heatsink, and I see that the edge of the MOBO is not straight.

A closer look shows that the CPU and (quite large) heatsink are very close to one edge of the MOBO. It becomes obvious that the pressure of the heatsink on the quite small CPU has started to push the cpu socket “through” the mobo… causing the board around this area to warp out of its usual flat shape.

Looking under the mobo shows 2 slight scorch marks. One under the CPU, and one under a transistor.

I’d say, as the board started to warp, something electrical started to lose contact, and other components tried to compensate (and started overheating).

It also explains why it worked for an hour… I must have left the heatsing off for long enough, so that the mobo shape started to re-flatten.

Anyway, I replace the MOBO and CPU, and reinstall windows (can’t do a repair install, as he doesn’t have the original win2000 CDs).

I restore the original data, and soon everything is back to normal again.

overheating Medion laptop

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer has a very old Medion laptop. He has some important data, which he needs recovered, as windows refuses to boot.

After some investigation, I find that even running BARTPE from CD, it only runs for a few minutes before either slowing to a crawl, or stopping completely.

I take a look at the cooling fan… Its a removable type, but nothing obvious blocking the vents… But I notice its running an old Athlon processor (I think around 1.2GHz).

It eventually becomes obvious that there is a severe temperature problem. I remember the old Athlons had some temperature issues (they always ran hot).

I try to reseat the cooling system, but it makes no difference.

So I take the laptop to the office, copy all the data to about 4 DVDs, and hand it all back to the customer (who is now going to buy a new laptop).

old laptop RAM is difficult to find

Computer Aid Posted on by

This is a problem that doesn’t have a good answer.

Over the past 20 months, I have been asked a few times, to upgrade the RAM on a laptop.

The age of the laptops can vary from 1 to 6 years old… Yet I often find it difficult to get RAM that will work correctly (unless I do a lot of forum trawling, looking to see if laptop X will work with RAM Y).

A case in point is a Compaq laptop (maybe 3 years old)… It had a double sided DDR SODIMM ram card (PC2100, 266MHz)… nothing extraordinary.

I happened to have a single-sided 128Mb PC2100. I understand that the days of single-sided and double-sided RAM cards died with the older SDRAM standard… But I could be wrong.

I try the 128Mb RAM, and it works great.

The customer wants 512Mb RAM (I can’t find any 256MB RAM), so I get a used 512Mb SODIMM (double sided, PC2100). But when I try it, it just doesn’t work! (no other RAM: black screen, with other RAM: the 512 is not detected). I take it back to the supplier, and it tests OK.

As luck would have it, I’m looking at upgrading another laptop, and the memory works in that one. Phew!

I can only think of one main reason (and maybe a few related reasons) why the RAM didn’t work: the laptop is designed with a maximum allowed RAM (or RAM socket) size… which seems crazy to me… why artificially limit the expansion capabilities of a laptop?

And there have been countless times when I get what should be compatible RAM, and it doesn’t work (but works in a different laptop.

I’ve never had this much difficulty with ordinary PCs… so why are laptops so difficult?

Defender 0X80240016

Computer Aid Posted on by

I seem to get many odd windows defender problems.

This one happens during updates on an infrequently used PC (I switch it on maybe once or twice per month).

I do an antivir update, followed by a defender update, and I get a 0x80240016 error.

I find out that its not really a problem… restart defender (or the PC), and it will say everything is fine… how annoying.

busy busy busy

Computer Aid Posted on by

I cannot believe how busy I’m getting now.

I now find I leave home somewhere between 8am and 10am, and often get home between 5pm and 7pm… sometimes with 1 or 2 computers to work on…

That doesn’t leave me with much time to actually work on them, so I often need to catchup over weekends. I can see that this kind of workload could easily continue… my efforts (marketing, customer service, SEO, etc) are all starting to pay off.

I have already handed my phone over to my lovely wife, Mandy, who now books customers and does some purchasing, invoicing, and some pickups and deliveries.

Now I need to carefully plan what I need to do in the future. I can see a few options:

  1. Keep going, and don’t let fatigue catch up with me…
  2. Deliberately slow down (and have to turn away customers… which I have worked so hard to gain)
  3. Take on some contractors for additional work (I’ve already got someone in South East Brisbane… but not much work in that area yet… and a part-time web designer (Great work Ryan!))…

Point 3 is where I’m heading, but I need to be very careful, as I don’t know if I have what it takes to “inspire” people, recognise who I can trust, and generally manage people… I’ve never really been management material, and I don’t know if I will enjoy heading down that path.

But then again, I’ve had few problems being accountant, salesman, secretary, purchasing officer, webdesigner, SEO consultant, technician, and marketing manager, for Computer Aid.

If I need to relinquish any of those roles, then I need to do so to someone I can trust, and in a way that will keep costs low.

I can see 3 roles for contractors:

  1. Independent: they are a lot like me, they can do most things, and are good with customers. I just need to keep an eye on overlapping territories.
  2. the super geeks… they can only work on computers in a “back office” situation… they are good with technology, but shouldn’t be allowed to face customers
  3. The specialist (eg website designer)… these can also fall into categories 1 and 2 above, but are good for specific “time consuming” jobs( like website design).

How to expand? I really don’t know.

I’d like to avoid franchising… I don’t like the idea of a huge $ hit when buying a franchise… so I couldn’t do that to someone else.

Licensing sounds like a good idea, but there is very little info on how best to do it.

Hiring employees, is not an option (just too expensive at this point). 

So, for the moment, it looks like subcontractors are the way to go… I take a small % of what the customer pays, and the subbie gets the rest… No huge upfront fees for the contractor, but they will always be tempted to go out on their own (and not pay the computer aid fee), and take many customers with them… I guess every business runs that risk… I just need to minimise it somehow.

Is there anyone out there, who is good with computers and people, who wants to work in northern Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, or South West Brisbane? Pay is variable and inconsistent. Apply within 😉

mmc cannot open dfrg.msc

Computer Aid Posted on by

One of my XP systems developed a strange problem: while trying to start a disk defragment, I get:

MMC cannot open dfrg.msc. This may be because the file does not exist, is not an MMC console, or was created by a later version of MMC.

I look around the net, and find all sorts of answers (of which, none work).

Then I carefully analysed the error string:

file does not exist: false… the file is there

is not an MMC console… possible, as I had to do a repair install of windows XP recently

later version of MMC… possible, but should have been picked up when I did my MS updates.

I then start to thinking: I use autopatcher to quickly apply any new patches (particularly after a repair install, as re-downloading updates can take a very long time).

Its possible that autopatcher installs a new version of MMC, and I forgot to reinstall it after the repair install… sure enough, autopatcher has MMC3.0 marked as not installed…

I install it, and disk defragmenter is now running again. 🙂

Although autopatcher is great for the type of work I do (I often reinstall windows… for various reasons), I guess I need to be aware of its limitations.

fast fw54u (rt2571 chipset) RT73 wireless driver

Computer Aid Posted on by

I’ve been getting these wireless 802.11G usb network adapters from china.

But lately, the driver CD that they ship doesn’t actually have the correct driver… typical.

All the adapter has on the cover is “FAST FW54U” 54Mbps wireless adapter

I open it up, and the chip has an RA logo and the identifier: RT2571WF

After some digging, I find I need to download the rt73 drivers to make it work…

http://www.ralinktech.com

But its not an easily found driver…