Sick hard drive given a second chance

Had a customer bring me a laptop few days ago because they couldn’t get it to boot up. It would get most of the way into windows, flash a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), then reboot. That’s all it could do, safe mode, install mode, everything refused to see a useable or functional hard drive.

Now for those of you that have never had a hard drive fail on you, well first your very lucky. Second, you can’t really understand the frustration of having to recreate everything that was on the drive, assuming that recreation is even possible. Financial records are one thing but the only copy of photos taken of pets, family members, or vacations can’t just be recreated.

I really wasn’t looking forward to telling the customer that not only would they need a replacement drive (~$70) and a full reinstall of XP (~$50), but that all the data on the drive was unrecoverable. I always hate having to tell someone that, well any bad news really but the loss of a hard drive is particularly hard on most people.

So I’m faced with a hard drive that is essentially dead, a customer that will be none too pleased to hear it, and weekend to mull it over. Super. Course it took me a good couple of hours before my brain finally started working like it should and remember that I had a new piece of software designed to recover dying hard drives. Something I picked up a while back that sounded like a good thing to have around, could never play with it since I didn’t have any drives that were KNOWN to be bad. With nothing to lose I gave it a shot. Had to pull some tricks with a media card to get it to work on the computer but got it working on recovering the data and went to bed. A normal cycle takes about 20 minutes without errors up to 48 hours with errors, depending on severity.

Wake up the next morning with the cycle complete and the laptop ready to try windows again. The software had found a corrupted sector on the drive and managed to read enough of the data that it cold repair the broken components on the drive and function normally. The laptop presented me with a windows XP login screen just as it should.

Now the drive still has the corrupted sector since there’s no way to fix that, generally a problem with the physical components of the drive. But the drive works now. The closest equivalent in the human realm is cancer. It can be removed, irradiated, dealt with, and worked around but it never completely goes away until the part is replaced. The laptop is doomed to have this problem again eventually and there are other complications like slow speed, potential for data loss, etc but for the moment it has a second chance to function.

Of course I told the customer all this and urge them to start looking for a replacement laptop (it was quite old) or at least consider a replacement drive to backup all the data they needed to keep.  Hopefully they will and in doing so avoid another malfunction that would cost far more than just the money to fix.

Never pay for antivirus. Ever

On 8-19-2011 we tweeted that “One should never pay for having an antivirus, but they are sure to pay for NOT having one.” That comment spurred some questions about the antivirus software and the industry in general.

The second half of the tweet says that “they are sure to pay for NOT having one.” No matter how careful you are. Regardless of what you use your machine for or who uses it you will eventually have an encounter with a virus of some kind. You simply cannot go around the internet without some kind of defense in place to guard. Problem is the press has overhyped much of the computer virus situation and marketers have blown the concept of ‘you get what you pay for’ to levels that are just disgustingly greedy.

The most common question I hear is “Did I waste my money on renewing my <insert pay-for antivirus here> subscription?”
Typical answer, unfortunately yes.

There have been free anti-virus solutions around for the last 10+ years, most for home users only and until recently they were pretty basic and didn’t work all that well.

Times. Have. Changed.

There are 3 that I like and 1 that I love for home use. And they all beat out the big name pay-for  Norton & MacAfee. The 3 solutions that I like but that cost nothing are Avast free, AVG, & Avira Free. None of these leave a huge foot print on your machine, they don’t invade the operation of every program, and they just work. Norton and McAffe load several bloated applications to do a number of things to ‘protect’ you. These free applications are comparatively small, so they install quickly and load quickly. Norton internet security suite was notorious in the past for causing more problems than it solved (McAffe wasn’t much better). This is actually so common the first thing I would do when servicing a machine that had one of these applications was to simply remove it. 40% of the time that one action fixed their issues. Everything from machines that refused to get online to bootup errors have been caused by expensive software that was totally un-necessary.

But the biggest issue is that the pay-for versions miss just as much (and sometimes more) than the free software. They also seem to want to remind you they are there and working. You shouldn’t need a reminder that your software is doing what its suppose to, unless that software is prone to failure. So now you know why they keep telling you everything they are doing.

The one solution that I love isn’t perfect, but none are. It installs quickly, silently, and without bugging me. It runs quietly,  it’s free, and updates on its own without any prompting. Sometimes I forget its even there. EXACTLY LIKE AN ANTIVIRUS SHOULD! It performs just as well as the other free solutions and sometimes better. Microsoft Security Essentials is why you should never ever buy another antivirus. You can download and install it from windows updates.

So you can pay for software that will slow your machine, take up tons of space, annoy you at every turn, be a royal pain, and then demand that you pay more money when the subscription runs out. I just don’t know why you would WANT to when there are better programs out there that don’t cost you anything.

25% off Labor fees till 8-31-11

For a limited time we are offering a 25% discount on any labor fees for in shop service. You bring your computer to us and you save $12.5 per hour. Get windows reinstalled for $37.50 for most machines and have your computer running at its best.

Contact us for more information!

Computers for the masses

Starting with the 2011-2012 school year, Putnam Co R1 High School has made netbooks available to the students. Focusing primarily on the freshman class these netbooks are available for $30 per quarter with prices scaling for upper classmen who don’t have 3 years of school left. 8^th graders will even have the opportunity to take part in the project around January. The school is merely recouping its losses at that point since the school can’t afford to outright buy all those machines at once, but the project is not a fundraiser either.

The concept behind this project is if you get computers into as many kids hands as possible and once they have them, to incorporate their use into daily work then the students get the experience they need for working in college and beyond without having to have a class that focuses in ‘how to use a computer’. The problem is that in this area many of the students that don’t already have access to a computer are in that situation because of financial reasons. Let’s face it, buying a computer for each of your kids can get really expensive really fast. So with this program the school east the costs up front and recoups the expenses over the next few years. During the project period the laptop is managed by the technology department of the school. Meaning that antivirus, required software, regular maintenance, and repair labor are all covered as part of the project.

Each participant receives a netbook running windows 7, Microsoft Office, and access to a 3 yr warranty on their machine. After the project period is complete (3 years for all but seniors and juniors) the cost of the laptop is covered, the licenses are taken care of, and the equipment is released to the user. The user is also given the option to have the machine re-imaged back to a factory state free of the schools management and filtering software, unlocking the machine completely. If the user declines, then the filtering software is removed after graduation and the management software reverts to a dormant state.

As part of the project Rural Digital Services will give a 50% discount on any labor charges on any of these machines after the project period. So students get a good computer, software, support, and a deal on servicing for the life of the machine. Lucky kids…