Top Marks I.T.

December 10th  2011..

Data Recovery / Backup

'Very impressed with this IDE/SATA to USB 2.0 adapter. Connects to IDE & SATA 3.5" & 2.5" Hard Drives.  It is supplied with its own power supply & makes data transfer & backup of customers data prior to maintenance in an otherwise U/S system a relatively easy task.  Also very portable for those Bexhill Home Visits.

December 10th  2011..

Built-in-Bexhill !

'System' Hard Drive Replacement for this 2006 Built XP PC. The 40Gb WD System drive failed but this machine was built with a 2nd internal 80GB 'Data' drive. The machine also benefited from an automated backup system using 'Karen's Replicator' to copy important data from the separate Data drive to an external drive for added security. Luckily replacement of the 'System' disk with the 'Data' disk still in good order makes for minimal configuration & this 'workhorse' of a machine will soon be re-united with its owner & running exactly as before.

December 08th  2011..

More PSU Faults !

Yet another desktop PC in the workshop with Power Supply problems today. This high spec hp machine's PSU must feed Optical Drive, Hard Drive, Removable Hard Drive bay, Card reader, graphics card pin, motherboard 20 pin & 4 pin! A busy (& Crowded) machine to work on. The case also had inbuilt WiFi antenna's very cleverly secreted in the 'rubberized' lid.

December 2011..

Possibly the most Awkward ...

...  Motherboard 20 pin connector I've encountered in a 'Midi' Tower! Cubes are always a squeeze but this old but much loved & much needed family PC suddenly died the owners feared the worse! However it was just the PSU (Power Supply Unit) that had failed, replacing it however was  ... 'A Challenge'! The motherboard power connector sat 5mm below the hard drive necessitating removal of the whole hard drive/floppy (yes floppy) drive carrier....

.... But that was a good thing when you see the dust & cobwebs around the floppy drive

....  spare Power Supply hooked up for test before removal of even more metalwork in order to install proper!

....  Machine also gets a good Health Check, Disk Clean, defrag & anti virus upgrade while the new PSU is tested

.... Now back with owners complete with Desktop Shortcut for 'Norad Tracks Santa' to Hype Up the owners kids in the coming pre X-Mas weeks !!

November 2011..

Night Shift in

The Bexhill Computer Workshop

This is going to be a long night in the workshop. I can visit you at home during 'Sociable Hours' then work here to sort out those 'Poorly Computers'.  I have 7 machines running in various states of repair as i 'type' ! All are currently at some stage of software download, install or upgrade! That gives me time to update these pages :-)

November 2011..

Too Slow to use !!

This nice 23" Touch Screen Hp machine was 'Painfully Slow' & almost impossible to use despite its pretty high spec! After the usual health checks & tune up tweaks did little to improve performance, a 'Factory Restore' was the next step after ensuring data had been backed up. The machine will also get a Windows 7 upgrade in the workshop. 

November 2011..

Temporary Devices (2)

Another favourite device of mine is the USB 2.0 to Gigabit USB / RJ45 Lan adapter! Essential kit when 'Clean Installing' the OS before the OB LAN / WLAN drivers are installed & you need to get On-Line to download the drivers. A quick & simple solution to getting a connection during re-builds or other maintenance/fault finding operations!

November 2011..

Temporary Devices (1)

Sometimes the only way to get things running again & start fault finding or OS Re-Install is to temporarily hook up a working optical drive to the machine in the workshop. This Dell desktop PC was refusing to boot from the disc drive despite being told to do so in the BIOS! This was due to a faulty optical drive, so hooking up to a 'known working' spare provided a means to load the OS & other software!