I got a funny toshiba laptop to fix…

Its only 1 year old, but has spent most of its life in “storage” (police evidence). Client has only just got the laptop back.

Client doesn’t have anything important & doesn’t mind a reformat.

First I boot a knoppix CD & it works fine & sees the HD

So I repartition, reformat, reinstall XP, & all seems to work fine.

Next day, the laptop is back… won’t boot again.

I try installing knoppix to the HD, & it also works fine

But client says it still doesn’t boot… the bios doesn’t seem to detect the HD.

I look at it & sure enough, it tries to boot from floppy, & the CD, but the HD doesn’t even show during the POST screen… I go into the bios & it doesn’t show the HD either… curious.

After a reboot, the HD is detected & it tries to boot… So I give it another reboot & then re-install win XP.

A few reboots later, & I notice that the HD doesn’t show up again…

The web gives no hint of a cause.

I flash the latest Toshiba bios (its no help)

I decide to swap HD with the one in my ibm laptop.

Wow! Taking the HD out of the Toshiba is not for the faint hearted! I have to almost dismantle the entire laptop, just to get to the HD… take the screen off, the keyboard, a bit of plastic above the keyboard (which makes load cracking & snapping noises… very unnerving).

Anyway, the IBM detects the toshiba HD every time (after 11 reboots).
The toshiba detects the ibm hd every time also…

So, put everything back (snap, crackle, pop, crunch!), & then I’m back to square one.

I suspect it could be a bootup timing problem (bios checks for HD, but HD isn’t ready to (or is too slow to) respond… by the time the HD is ready, the bios has moved on to other things…

I’ve go nothing better to do, so I boot the laptop about 100 times… I notice it detects the HD about 4 or 5 times, and the “detections” seem “clustered” ie 2 detections in a row.

I give the client his options:

1) keep the laptop always running… if it switches off, you need to reboot until it detects the HD.
2) Get a new HD, but no guarantee that the new HD will work any better (I suspect a non-toshiba HD has a good chance of working)

He decides to go with option 1)

Update 01/10/2005: Client eventually got a flat battery & was unable to boot again. He went & bought a new hdd & an external usb enclosure & is now happy.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 10:40 PM EDT

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Given that I generally want to target customers in Northern Brisbane, then some forms of advertising can be discounted immediately:

- TV
- Radio
- Brisbane-wide newspapers

Now I’ve looked at the following ways of advertising:

- internet: cheap, but doesn’t fully target the customers that I’m looking to target… will look at it later

- local newspapers: living on the border between a few local paper areas, I get about 6 free local papers every week. cost is about $18 for a 3 line “trade” ad. distribution is to 80,000 houses, so its good value for money.

- placemats: a company that gives disposable “place mats” to eateries, restaurants, pubs, etc. A small ad in 5,000 mats is about $160

- school paper suppliers: 1 year supply of paper to schools (for printing newsletters), with advertising on one side. over $300

- yellow pages online: basic ad is free

- print yellow pages: basic ad is free. (the book covers the whole of Brisbane, I won’t argue with a free ad)

- local print yellow pages: basic ad is free, but larger ads cost about one quarter of what they cost in the “bigger” yellow pages.

- leaflet distribution: $300 - $600 . Not enough “bang for the buck”… I’d have to spend this money every week, in order to be noticed.

- business cards: about $50 for 1,000 glossy cards

- magnetic A4 ad stuck to the side of the car: about $18 per magnet

- ask neighbors to recommend & pass out business cards

Will try the cheaper paper advertising, get some business cards, stickers to the side of the car.

I’ll advertise on the internet as I have spare time.

http://www.computer-aid.com.au

Posted by Computer Help as Business at 12:59 PM EDT

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Nobody knows about Computer Aid.

I relocated from Melbourne to Brisbane in March 2005, so I don’t know a lot of people here.

How do I get my “name” out there?

From my business plan, I know that 2 out of 3 houses in Oz have a computer, so there must be a lot of people out there who have problems with their computers.

While developing my business plan I surveyed about 100 people by cold-calling over the phone (based on the local white pages). From these calls, I got 2 people who said they were interested, and 1 couple needed help “right now”.

If business starts looking slow, I could resort to cold-calling (but I don’t feel comfortable doing so).

Will investigate different forms of advertising (particularly low-cost advertising)

Posted by Computer Help as Business at 12:35 PM EDT

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Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 8:05 PM EDT

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Client says:
“I bought a new printer, and since I plugged it in, my computer won’t boot properly… it gives a message like: “this program has performed an illegal operation…”.

I think: Its probably some virus or spyware thats causing the blue screen… And the printer might have aggravated the situation.

I ask: windows version (win 98 )
I ask: are you on the internet (they were, a few months ago (dialup) ; but not anymore)

So, when I get there, I start the computer & it crashes before it completes its startup… Hmm… after some F8 & and lower level diagnostics, I see it also crashes while starting in safe mode… this is not good.

I decide to take the computer back home & work on it. It does have spyware, but it doesn’t really explain the severity of the blue screens… But I clean up the spyware & then run a re-install of windows, so that I have a known starting point. After that, all is well. (little did I know…)

I get to the clients house, start windows, then plug in the X2250 multi-function printer. It wants to install its drivers from the CD… fair enough. But about 90% through the driver install, I get a blue screen! Aaaaaargh!

after that, the computer is back to crashing at every reboot…

I give my apologies & take the computer, printer, & its driver CD with me, & I work on it back home…

Lexmark tech support (I think its in India) wasn’t very helpful. They will not help unless win 98 is patched to the latest microsoft releases. Given that I already spent a LOT of time on this problem, I don’t want to waste more time, when there is a good chance that the problem might not disappear & lexmark could then say something like “Oh, thats not happened before, we will have to pass this back to the developers… it might take a few months to fix this for you…”

So I ask the client: are you prepared to upgrade to win XP? it will cost $xxx.
Clint says yes.

So I install win XP, restore clients data, install the lexmark driver, and at last, its all working.

Maybe its just me, but from now on, I will not buy lexmark… it feels to me that they have lowered their prices by cutting the quality of their software drivers.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 8:05 PM EDT

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Posted by Computer Help as Uncategorized at 2:55 PM EDT

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Welcome to the computer aid blog.

From here, the plan is to post occasional computer “problems” and their solution, as i encounter them in my day-to-day work while running my company:

http://www.computer-aid.com.au

The rest of this post is pay per view.

Please click the “Buy Now” button (cost is $1 Australian Dollar).

Once you have paid, you will be returned to the Computer Aid website, and an email will be sent to you, with the password to unlock the protected web page.

Posted by Computer Aid as Uncategorized at 2:55 PM EDT

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