PC Troubleshooting Guide

Dust may cause your PC or Gadget to malfunction

Every gadget that has electrical contacts will always have some sort of failure sonner or later. Whether it is caused by dust, dirt, corrosion, or just plain wear and tear it will happen.

Moving on, everything from CF cards to flash memory cards, from batteries to USB peripherals can encounter this problem. I remember that the same thing happened to me with my PlayStation Portable unit. When I inserted the Memory Stick Duo, it was not recognized. I was sweating profusely and I restarted the unit and turned it on again, much to my shock that it seems it was empty. All my photos, saved games, or movies seemed lost. It was almost a year since i cleaned my memory card so i proceeded to clean the contacts using the eraser on my pencil and inserted it back to my PSP and Voila! The Memory Stick was alive again.

PC Power Source Issues

When a power supply conks out, the symptoms comes to you as both mysterious and confusing. Several scenarios start to pay inside you head like the computer hanging unexpectedly, shuts down all by itself or may suddenly restart.

Should your PC exhibit some of these annoying scenarios, you might want to check the power supply and if damaged, replace it. But before you do anything, try asking yourself first you’ve done in the past. Have you been using the CPU or chipset too long?If the answer is YES, then this kind of prolonged abuse quickly eats up wattage and harms your PSU bit by bit. Try to remove and disconnect unnecessary stuffs and observe if the computer’s performance improves.

Screech….ing hard drive – Finishing the Job (Part 6)

One drive systems usually have no jumpers while two or more drive systems can have them installed. Set your errant drive as the slave and the master drive (the new one) as the master drive. Install the drive and screw securely while ensuring all power cables and connectors are set in their proper places before you power up. Partition the new drive if desired and format each partition (this ensures no malicious programs might have been innocently???? left in the drive during testing by the retailer or manufacturer) even if the retailer who sold you the drive says it is factory formatted. Re-install the OS, drivers and all the other programs; re-copy all the necessary files and you’re all set to go. Oh, don’t forget to take out the errant drive after you copy all your documents and files (the drive can fail and damage the computer if the controller board shorts due to failure of the mechanical parts damaging the rest of your computer including the new drive).