Computer Repair Tips

Overheating and related shutdown problems are very common in laptops, especially in home use.  Common symptoms include some or all from this list;
- Laptop is extremely hot to the touch, especially around the fan area
- Fan seems to be running constantly, and at high speed
- Laptop shuts off by itself when doing nothing
- Laptop shuts off when playing games
- These heating or shutdown problems become worse over time, rather than getting better.

In around 1 in 10 cases, there is a fault with the cooling hardware. By this I mean either a mechanical failure with the fan where it can no longer spin, or spins slowly, or a motherboard electrical fault which exhibits itself by not telling the fan to spin fast enough to cool the laptop.

However 9 out of 10 cases of overheating are caused by an airflow blockage. In these cases, the fan is spinning as fast as it can, but if the hot air is obstructed from reaching the outside world, a heat build-up occurs and the laptop takes the safety precaution of turning itself off, rather than allowing permenant damage to occur. (more…)

Technorati Tags: laptop repair, laptop ventilation

What is a Reflow?

The term ‘reflow’ describes a process of briefly melting (reflowing) the solder on an electrical circuit board.

Why would you perform a Reflow on a laptop?

The solder used in laptop motherboards tends to degrade over time, becoming brittle and weak. It can change from being a solid block of solder into more of a honeycomb structure. This weaker solder joint can fracture causing tiny broken connections in the circuit, invisible to the naked eye. The idea behind performing a reflow is that it melts the solder, allowing it to form a solid block again and joining up the electrical circuit. (more…)

Technorati Tags: laptop repair, motherboard, video

In our repair shop, we are sometimes asked by customers if there is any harm in shutting down their computer by just pressing the power button for a few seconds, rather than going through the Windows shutdown procedure.

As far as the customer in concerned, the end result appears to be the same, the computer shuts down. In fact, from their point of view, holding the power button for a few seconds appears to shut down the computer immediately, whereas a proper Windows shutdown takes maybe 20 to 30 seconds. So is it a good idea to do this?

To get straight to the point, it is a very, very bad idea to shut down a computer by holding the power button. (more…)

Technorati Tags: desktop advice, hard disk, laptop advice

I don’t turn away much repair work, but I turned down a job today. Here’s the story.

A customer phoned up and said his backlight had failed. He had ordered a new one and had started taking his laptop apart to replace it. But he soon got out of his depth, didn’t want to risk breaking the delicate backlight and wanted me to finish the job for him. (more…)

Technorati Tags: backlight, laptop repair, lcd screen

We had a returning customer come into the shop a few days ago. Everything was working fine on his computer apart from Firefox. His operating system was Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit.

When he loaded up Firefox, his homepage appeared straight away. But any time he would click on one of the menus, or any of his favourites on his favourites bar, Firefox would go Not Responding, the little Windows 7 ‘waiting’ circle would appear and spin round, and the Firefox window would change to that opaque white colour that tells you Windows 7 is struggling with something. (more…)

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Windows 7