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.

I will, very quickly, explain how a laptop cools itself. Heat from the CPU, and sometimes the graphics chip, is conducted away from the processors via strips of copper metal. At the far end of this copper heatsink, the heat is fed into a series of side-by-side metal fins. This grill provides a very large surface area for the heat to be spread over. A fan then draws air from the outside world and blows across the hot grill, back towards the outside. As it does so, the air picks up heat from the hot metal fins and takes it away from the laptop.

In an airflow obstruction scenario, the most likely culprit is a build-up of material in front of the metal heatsink grill. The fan will be drawing in cool air through vents from the outside world and occasionally there might be a tiny piece of fluff, hair or dust sucked into the laptop. When this air is being blown across the metal grill, the airborne material gets stuck on the front of the fins. If this keeps happening over time, gradually more and more material will build up on the front of the grill, creating an obstruction.

A common example of this buildup of material is shown in the image to the left.  All of the grey material is a combination of dust, lint, hair or fluff, compacted on to the front of the heatsink grill.

The effect of this is to block some of the airflow over the heatsink grill. With less physical space for the air to get through, the air is not picking up heat from the whole set of fins. So a smaller amount of heat is transferred to the air in it’s journey to the outside world. With less heat being removed, the heat starts to build up inside the laptop. Temperature sensors detect this and will react by making the fan spin faster and faster. The point of spinning the fan faster is to force more air through the available gaps, and past the hot metal fins to pick up more heat.

This compensation of spinning the fan faster can work to an extent, but eventually a limit will be reached. If the heatsink grill is sufficiently blocked, the fan will be spinning at maximum speed and it will no longer be possible to reduce, or even stabilse, the internal temperature of the laptop. Temperature sensors will realise this and as a final failsafe protection measure the laptop will power itself off. The hope behind this is that if the CPU is no longer producing more and more heat, the existing internal heat will gradually dissipate of it’s own accord and the laptop will, hopefully, avoid serious damage.

To fix this problem, you need to strip the laptop down to allow access to the heatsink and fan(s).  I’m not going to explain how to strip down a laptop, step by step, as there are guides elsewhere for this, and some manufacturers, for example Dell, even provide Service Manuals on the support pages of their website. 

In most cases, to disassemble a laptop, all you will need are one or two small screwdrivers.  Some laptops require special torx screwdriver heads to remove some of the internal screws, so you will need to investigate this in relation to your particular laptop make and model.

The pictures I have taken for this post were from an overheating Dell Vostro 3700 laptop.  It would shut itself off after about 15 minutes of average use.  It was extremely hot to the touch around the fan area, and the overheating problem had gotten progressively worse over time.  The Dell Service Manuals explained how to remove the heatsink / fan assembly.

In this laptop, the fan was mounted on to a plate so I removed the screws holding the fan.  I’ve circled the tiny screws for easy identification.

The top image in this post shows the build-up of dust on the front of the heatsink fins.  In fact, it also goes to show that you don’t need a massive wad of dust to cause overheating and shutdowns.  In this case there was approximately 90% of the fins obstructed by a thin layer of material, but you can also see that there are still a few small gaps where a little air will have been able to pass through.  Each make and model of laptop will have it’s own threshold as to how much obstruction there can be before it causes a problem.  I’ve seen cases where there is a large solid strip of dust and fluff, several millimeters thick, that peeled away in one large piece.

After brushing away most of the dust build-up, I gave the heatsink fins and the fan a good blast with compressed air.  This blew away the last remnants of dust, and left a nice clean shiny heatsink grill and fan.

All that remained was to reassemble the laptop using the same steps as before, except in reverse.

The laptop is now working well and no longer overheats or shuts off by itself.  A side-benefit of this fix is that the laptop now runs a lot quieter.  Because the fan can now remove the excess heat in the laptop while running at a slower speed, it reduces the fan noise.  The laptop is also now a lot cooler to the touch.

Technorati Tags: laptop repair, laptop ventilation

This scam has been quietly doing the rounds in the UK and Ireland since at least 2009 but it appears to be on the rise. The scam goes like this;

• Householders receive an unsolicited phone call from someone claiming to be from ‘Microsoft’ and they are told that there is a serious virus problem with their computer and the caller offers to help to fix the problem.
• The householder will get the hard sell from the caller regarding all sorts of bad things that will happen to their computer if they do not sort out the problem immediately.
• To try to gain the unwitting householders trust, the caller will direct them to the Event Viewer in Windows which shows details about various hardware and Windows software issues. This Event Viewer is always full of messages, even on a healthy computer, but the caller will convince them that these are the warning signs of the impending disaster.
• When the caller has their trust, they ask the householder to go to a website and download a remote control program that will help them fix the problem. After downloading this, the caller will take control of the computer, the householder will see their mouse pointer move around while various programs and folders are opened. The caller will claim that they know exactly what the problem is and how to fix it.
• Then they will ask for credit card details for a piece of software that will supposedly remove the ‘virus’.

Customers should hopefully already have alarm bells ringing at the mention of credit card details and end the conversation. The software that they sell to fix the computer will do nothing except tell you every now and then that everything is fine, all viruses have been removed. But in reality, it could be downloading all sorts of malware to your computer.

However, part of the scam’s damage may already have been done when the customer downloaded the remote control software. This software could well have the capability to sit in the background for months or years, stealing personal information from the computer like bank login details and other personal details that could be used for identity theft purposes. These callers could also be using this software to infect your computer with real viruses and malware.

Quote from Microsoft:
“Microsoft takes the privacy and security of our customers and partners personal information very seriously. We are advising customers to treat all unsolicited phone calls with skepticism and not to provide any personal information to anyone over the phone or online. Anyone who receives an unsolicited call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft should hang up. We can assure you Microsoft does not make these kinds of calls.”

“For more information on this scam and how to protect yourself against this, please click here”

Our Tip:
If you receive one of these unsolicited phone calls, hang up and do not download anything they ask you to. And definitely don’t hand over your credit card details, just because someone mentions the well known name ‘Microsoft’.

If you have allowed them to take control of your computer, or download their ‘fix’ software, it is likely they have infected your computer with a virus or other malware. To avoid the potential for identity theft issues and computer problems due to the viruses and malware they may have downloaded, we would strongly recommend that you take your computer to a reputable computer repair shop to have it thoroughly checked out.

At our own computer repair shop in Coleraine, we have experts that have years of experience and know exactly what to look for, so if you are in the local area, please feel free to contact us for advice or bring your computer in to be checked over.

Technorati Tags: desktop advice, laptop advice, scam, virus

As more files get written and deleted, this fragmentation of the hard disk increases.  More files are being broken up into smaller chunks, making the hard disk work harder trying to read back all the fragments.

Although modern fast hard disks are very capable of reading all of these fragments when you request the file, it is never quite as fast as being able to read the file in one piece from start to finish.  So the purpose of running a defrag program is to Defragment your hard disk.  In other words, it will reorganise all the pieces of files (fragments) so that they are joined up into one piece again.  The end result can be, in badly fragmented computers, a noticeable improvement in speed when reading files from the hard disk.

Microsoft Windows has its own built-in tool for defragging your hard disk but I prefer a free little tool called JKDefrag.  It’s just so simple that anyone can use it, and it is compatible with all version of Windows.

Download:
Unzip this file
When the file has been unzipped, you will see a few files in a folder. The one you want to run is called JkDefrag.exe. Just double click this file and the defrag will start.

It will bring up a colourful window showing a represenation of your hard disk, and it will automatically begin defragging your hard disk.   That’s right – no more buttons to press.  As it works, you will even see it move coloured blocks around your hard disk, showing that it is piecing your files back together again. And when it has finished, it will let you know.
Another really nice feature I like about JkDefrag is that it is safe to stop it at any time by just clicking the X box in the top right corner. 

Running a defrag program about once a month should be more than adequate for any PC.

Video:

Here is a YouTube video I found of someone downloading and running JkDefrag.  It’s so simple to do.

Screenshot:

Technorati Tags: hard disk, repair tool, video

1. Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive – Black

Manufacturer: Western Digital

Capacity: 1TB (approx 1000 Gigabytes) – other sizes available

Connections: USB 2.0

Weight: 1.02Kg

Comment: Western Digital’s WD Elements Desktop USB 2.0 external hard drives are the right answer for simple, reliable add-on storage. Simply plug one into a USB port and start saving your photos, music, video, and files. Designed with the same commitment to quality that made WD external drives the number one selling drives in the world, the WD Elements comes with plug-and-play simplicity, meaning you just have to connect the power and plug it into a USB port to instantly add more storage to your computer.

Box Contents: Western Digital Elements Drive, USB cable, AC adapter, Quick Install Guide

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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.

When would you perform a Reflow?

There are a number of scenarios where performing a reflow can be successful. A typical example is a laptop motherboard which is receiving power, lights come on to confirm this, but it just won’t power up. It is possible that a crucial connection has been broken by weakened solder.
Another common example is a laptop that will appear to power up, but there is no graphics output to the LCD panel or to an external screen. In this case, it is likely that there is a broken solder joint around the graphics chip (GPU).

A reflow is a method of last resort. In other words, you would only ever try this on a motherboard that was so completely faulty that it would otherwise need to be replaced. If performed incorrectly, a reflow can damage your motherboard even further. But on the other hand, if the motherboard is broken anyway, and would otherwise be replaced, then performing a reflow won’t make the problem any worse.

Certain makes and models of laptops seem to be more prone to these GPU problems than others.  It seems to be particularly common in the NVIDIA chips used in some HP laptops, especially the following models; Pavillion dv2000, dv6000, dv9000, dv9500, dv9600, dv9700 and Compaq Presario V3000, V6000.

How do you perform a Reflow?

There are expensive infra-red reflow stations which can be purchased which will do this job for you. However, if you are on a budget, the easiest method of performing a reflow is to bake the laptop motherboard in a household oven.

This might sound a bit crazy, baking your laptop in an oven, but if performed correctly, it can achieve the same end result, remaking the solder connections which may have been broken.

It is very important that the motherboard is completely stripped down before attempting this procedure. Remove the CPU, heatsink & fan, RAM, BIOS battery, wires, speakers, stickers, plastic sticky guards, foam spacers, absolutely everything that can be removed from the motherboard.

Then preheat your household oven to approximately 200°C or 385°F. If your oven does not have a digital temperature display, perhaps use an internal oven thermometer to make sure the oven is in the right temperature range.

Roll up some kitchen foil into balls, between half an inch and an inch wide, and place them on a baking tray. Place your motherboard, with CPU socket and GPU facing upwards, on top of the foil balls. It is a good idea to wrap additional foil around the more sensitive parts of the motherboard, like areas where there are capacitors and the CPU socket. If the reflow is being performed because of a faulty graphics chip (GPU) then perhaps wrap the rest of the motherboard in foil to protect it, leaving just the GPU exposed on both the top and bottom of the motherboard.

Then place the baking tray with the motherboard on it into the preheated oven. Make sure your kitchen is well ventilated at this stage, turn on the extractor fan to full power and/or open an outside door and windows. This will help to take away any fumes.  Ideally, you should leave the kitchen while any fumes are still present.

A couple of times during the procedure, have a quick look through the oven door (without opening it) making sure there are no smoke or flames visible. This is unlikely to occur, but can happen if stickers were left on the motherboard.

After 8 minutes, turn the oven off and open the oven door. Do not remove the motherboard from the oven at this stage, it could be very hot and it is a better idea to allow it to cool down gradually. Take care not to inhale any fumes that might be present.

After 20 minutes to half an hour, remove the cool motherboard from the oven and begin rebuilding your laptop. If all has gone well, it will boot up and the problem will be fixed. If the problem remains, you could try the procedure again, leaving it in the oven for a couple of minutes longer.

After performing a reflow in an oven, I recommend cleaning the oven thoroughly, then turn it on and allow any fumes that may have built up to be completely removed.  This is especially important before cooking food in the oven again.

How long will a Reflowed motherboard last?

It is impossible to say for certain how long a repaired motherboard will last. It may be a few weeks or a year, there is no way to know for certain. The problem with the solder fracturing does tend to come back again eventually though. However this technique might at least get your laptop running again for a while, long enough perhaps to save up for a new laptop.

Video of a Motherboard Reflow

Here is a quick YouTube video I came across of someone performing a motherboard reflow in a household oven. It doesn’t cover all the points I describe here but it shows the basic principle.

*** Disclaimer: ***
Putting your laptop in a household oven is dangerous and is a method of last resort when fixing a fault. This method of performing a reflow is well documented across various sites on the internet, and although many people have had success with it, it may not work in every case. We will not be held liable for any damage, either direct or consequential, that you cause to your motherboard, to your oven or to any person or property as a result of attempting this procedure. Be safe and be sensible!

Technorati Tags: laptop repair, motherboard, video

Each of the S.M.A.R.T. parameters has a threshold, beyond which it could indicate a drive starting to fail.  If CrystalDiskInfo determines that any parameter is showing potential problems, it will highlight that row in the results table.

It also shows your current hard disk temperature, which can be a good indication about whether your computer system is running too hot.

There are two versions of this program, an installable version for running on a single computer, and a portable version ideal for computer repair technicians.  The installable version can be good for home users who want to track the health of their hard disk over a period of time.  CrystalDiskInfo can record the parameters each time you run it and produce graphs showing trends in the S.M.A.R.T. parameters.

This application was written by a Japanese developer, so the first time you use it, the language settings will be in Japanese.  To change language, click on the farthest right menu, select A-N, then select English.  It will remember your chosen language the next time you run the program so you don’t have to go through this process every time.

Read more about CrystalDiskInfo.

Download:
Portable version of CrystalDiskInfo.
Installable version of CrystalDiskInfo.

Screenshot:

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Technorati Tags: hard disk, repair tool

Of course, you should first check that the drive is properly connected, just in case.

This Windows registry fix is based on a problem that can occur related to CD/DVD writing software.  Unnecessary registry entries get created which interfere with how Windows communicates to your CD/DVD drive.

Note: Before attempting this fix, I recommend that you create a System Restore point.  This will allow you to return to the current state in case the fix does not work for you.

Fix for Windows 7

Windows 7 has some built-in troubleshooting which Microsoft claim can help fix this problem.  To access this, click on Start then Control Panel.  In the address bar along the top of the window, click the down arrow and select All Control Panel Items as shown in the image below.

Then click  Troubleshooting, then View All from the left panel and start the troubleshooter called Playing and Burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu‑ray Discs

If this troubleshooter does not work for you, please try the fix listed below for Windows Vista.  Personally I always use the manual fix below, just because I would rather know what exactly I am doing to fix the problem rather than using a troubleshooter wizard.

Fix for Windows Vista

Click Start and in the Search box, type regedit and press Enter.

In the left pane of the registry editor program, navigate to the following registry subkey,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Make sure to go to the exact registry subkey mentioned above, as there may be ones with very similar names.

In the right pane, check if a key called UpperFilters is present.  If it is, right click on UpperFilters and select Delete from the context menu.

If prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

In the right pane, check if a key called LowerFilters is present.  If it is, right click on LowerFilters and select Delete from the context menu.

If prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

Exit the registry editor program and restart your computer.

Fix for Windows XP

Click Start and then click Run.  In the Open box, type regedit and click OK.

In the left pane of the registry editor program, navigate to the following registry subkey,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Make sure to go to the exact registry subkey mentioned above, as there may be ones with very similar names.

In the right pane, check if a key called UpperFilters is present.  If it is, right click on UpperFilters and select Delete from the context menu.

If prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

In the right pane, check if a key called LowerFilters is present.  If it is, right click on LowerFilters and select Delete from the context menu.

If prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

Exit the registry editor program and restart your computer.

Disclaimer:
While every effort is made to ensure that our advice is correct and up-to-date, we will not be held liable in any way for damage you cause to your computer by inadvertent manual editing of the system registry.

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Technorati Tags: desktop repair, dvd drive, laptop repair, registry, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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.

In order to understand why this is such a bad idea, you need to understand a little about what a computer normally does during a standard Windows shutdown and why it needs to do these things.

During normal running,
- a computer hard disk is rotating thousands of times a minute
- the little arm that reads and writes data to the hard disk is moving backwards and forwards all the time
- Windows has many files open for reading and writing
- Windows may be reading and writing to the system registry

During a normal shutdown, (amongst doing many other things)
- Windows closes any files it was reading or writing
- Windows closes any access it has to the system registry
- the little hard disk arm is parked carefully at one side of the disk

So in comparison, what does holding the power button for a few seconds do?
Pressing the power button for a few seconds cuts power immediately to the whole computer.

What effect does this have?
Any files that Windows was writing to may now have incomplete or corrupt data, because you didn’t allow it to finish writing properly.
If Windows was writing to the registry, the system registry may now have incomplete or corrupt data because you didn’t allow it to finish writing.
The hard disk arm, not being allowed to park by the side of the disk, may scratch or damage the spinning disk, causing data to become corrupt.

Each of these things can cause hard disk data corruption. So what’s the big deal about that?
Well, for a long time you might get lucky and the data corruption may be in an area of the disk that you don’t notice, or a file that you can do without.
But one day, and it could be any day, you might find that one of your important programs no longer works because an important file is corrupt.
Or worse, Windows will no longer boot because the registry is corrupt.
Even worse again, the hard disk might have so many physical problems that it has to be replaced, potentially losing all your treasured photos, videos and documents that you always meant to backup but didn’t.

So please, for the sake of your data, and to avoid a costly repair, take a few seconds at the end of the day to shutdown Windows properly.

Technorati Tags: desktop advice, hard disk, laptop advice

There are a lot of different routes to the System Restore setup screen in Windows 7, but this is the way I use.

Click on the Start button and right click on Computer. Select Properties from the context menu and the System window will open.

Click on System Protection and the System Properties window will open, with the System Protection tab automatically selected.

Click Create and you will be asked for a name to give to this System Restore point. Try to give it a meaningful name so that if you ever have to roll back to this restore point, you will recognise the name you used.

Finally, click Create and the System Restore point will be created for you.

Technorati Tags: system restore, Windows 7

If the driver isn’t on a driver disk, and maybe you don’t have a copy of the driver because the original hard disk was broken – what do you do? The device just shows up as unknown modem, or unknown media device or something similar.

What you can do is check the properties of the device, find out its signature and look it up on a great little website www.PCIDatabase.com.

In Device Manager, right click on the unknown device and select Properties. Go to the Detail tab and select Hardware Ids from the drop down list. The image below shows what you should expect to see.

The Hardware Ids includes a Vendor code and Device code. In this case, the Vendor code is 8086 and the Device code is 10DE.

What you do next is head over to the www.PCIDatabase.com website and plug in one of these numbers. Usually I enter the Device code into the Device Search box as it tends to produce a shorter list of devices to look through.

The results page then shows you all devices in the database where Device code is 10DE. What you need to do then is look for the one that also has a matching Vendor code.

In this case I have found that my device with Vendor code 8086 and Device code 10DE is made by Intel and the specific device is an Intel Gigabit network connection.

Sometimes you will find links to drivers, but the best option is always to go the manufacturers website and look for their Support/Service/Downloads area and search for drivers for the named device.

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Technorati Tags: drivers, installing Windows