Grim's PC Repair Thread

[onmyknees]

Moral of the story; Druggie gets stoned, brags about his 6 month certificate for fixing computers or as they put it "Performing repairs and maintenance on PC's other electronic devices". And the druggie is doing it for free because he's a nice guy, but is compelled to remind you that he's doing for free because he's a nice guy.

Pomona..I kinda like Grim, but I gotta tell ya..that's the funniest fucking thing I've ever read. I'm pissing my Levi's.

[GrimFusion]

Pomona..I kinda like Grim, but I gotta tell ya..that's the funniest fucking thing I've ever read. I'm pissing my Levi's.

I gotta admit I laughed a little too. If nothing else, at least the guy's creative.

[GrimFusion]

Acronis is a good product, I largely gave up on Ghost after it started having issues with manufacturer pre-installed special system or restore partitions but they may have fixed that by now. Also look into Shadow Protect (desktop or server) it can create incremental bare metal restore points while the system is running so you get multiple fall back points. DeepFreeze causes more problems than its worth and its pain in the ass to work around when they come up.

Skip imaging to DVD media, it takes too long and one scratched or bad DVD in the set and your image set cant be restored and is now useless. You can get a 500 Gb USB drive for about 50 bucks and a 1TB is only $100 and is much faster and more stable than a bunch of DVD's. (youll still need to use a utility Boot disk but since they arnt unique like the image disks you can always make another.) If you go ESata youll cut down your imaging time even more or get a nice little NAS unit running on a gigabit LAN and use that for incremental every 3 hours and youll always have a fall back point.

Id list off my system specs but thats like so much dick waving LOL... Besides my day job is a Network Admin for 3 Airports, a large main office facility, a retail chain administrative office and a Medical specialist placement firm so if I listed all the systems I take care of it would take up a whole page.

BTW since your just getting started into the PC support thing you should look into getting TeamViewer for remote support on client systems, unlike other remote software like RDP or VNC ect... you dont have to worry about IP addresses or most firewall settings (unless they are really strict on allowing internal traffic get out of the network) The client is free and easy to have a user download and can be ran without installing. You can try it out completely for free and it generates a unique session and password for the client every time so people dont have to worry about you having access to their system after you complete the work. Ive got it installed on about 200 systems for remote management and love that I can connect to the client system anywhere Im at regardless of firewalls on either end as long as network access is available.

I heard about System Protect before... after I purchased DeepFreeze (go figure), but you're right. It is a better solution; I just wish they sold some kind of volume license copy instead of charging on a per-installation basis.

Your idea of backing up to a e-SATA external HD is completely sound, but I still think DVD backup is a better idea for the average joe. Just about everybody has access to a couple of jewel cases and DVD+R discs and most every computer these days has a DVD burner. Speed isn't really an issue unless you plan incremental backups, but I'm just talking about a single set of restore discs for when the client is in a pinch. Besides, if I make a restore disc set for a customer and they scratch the crap out of them by the time I have to come back and restore their computer, I get to charge another $160 for OS installation and software config. Go me.

I'll look into teamspeak as a RDC; right now I'm using a branded VNC server and computers behind some routers are a pain to connect to. Does teamspeak work anything like Hamachi or a VPN?

[TempestTS]

OK ROTFLOL... you got the name wrong of all the applications I suggested and there were only two. Oh well you were close.

Its Shadow Protect, and you can get the IT edition which allows unlimited installs but its going to cost you up fron

Using e-SATA or USB external drives for backup isnt just about speed although if your maintaining a bunch of systems time can be an enemy so you want to get things back up and going as quickly as possible so faster is better. DVD's are not stable, and Im not talking about scratches or mishandling them. DVD's use a dye system that will break down over time and since most people use pretty cheap DVD's the lifespan can be as short as a few years. High quality or "Gold Standard" media can last quite a bit longer but its still no where near as stable as a hard disk in a protected location and youll never have to worry about a restore image being wrecked because ONE DVD out of the set cant be read...

If your backing up its because its important. If your telling me that its not important enough to spend 40-50 bucks on a external drive then why even back up at all. Its not about charging the customer its about protecting the customer so they stay your customer for a long long time. I still have my first client office back when I went independant as a customer today nearly 10 years later and thats worth more than 160 bucks for a return visit that they might figure could have been avoided. You might get that $160 a couple times then they will look elsewhere and you lose not just them but any referrals you might get.

The other product I spoke of is TeamViewer, not teamspeak LOL... I used VNC for a long time as well as terminal services and while RDP is the best for general use when you need to connect to a first time client or a system that dosent have RDP running and nobody on location has a clue about their firewall or IP address TeamViewer makes the whole process just about as completely painless as possible. It works by both sides of the client connecting to the TeamViewer centeralized servers which work like a connection broker service so both sides are initiating the connection from inside their respective firewalls which is allowed by all but the most strict firewall rule sets. Try it out, get it on your system and have a friend who has no tech skills down load it on their system and run it, get them on the phone and have them run it and ask for their session and password numbers which it displays in big blue boxes as soon as you start it, enter those on your end and connect and you get right to their desktop, no ports to open, no external IP addresses to puzzle out, no tech terms, just "Hey can you read me the numbers in the blue boxes, OK Ill connect..." and its done... you can even be at a coffee shop or tethering your phone to a laptop and it will work. Slick little system.

[BBaggins06]

Is it wrong that I got turned on more by Tempest talking tech here than her return to porn thread? #nerdgasm

[GrimFusion]

OK ROTFLOL... you got the name wrong of all the applications I suggested and there were only two. Oh well you were close.

Its Shadow Protect, and you can get the IT edition which allows unlimited installs but its going to cost you up fron

Using e-SATA or USB external drives for backup isnt just about speed although if your maintaining a bunch of systems time can be an enemy so you want to get things back up and going as quickly as possible so faster is better. DVD's are not stable, and Im not talking about scratches or mishandling them. DVD's use a dye system that will break down over time and since most people use pretty cheap DVD's the lifespan can be as short as a few years. High quality or "Gold Standard" media can last quite a bit longer but its still no where near as stable as a hard disk in a protected location and youll never have to worry about a restore image being wrecked because ONE DVD out of the set cant be read...

If your backing up its because its important. If your telling me that its not important enough to spend 40-50 bucks on a external drive then why even back up at all. Its not about charging the customer its about protecting the customer so they stay your customer for a long long time. I still have my first client office back when I went independant as a customer today nearly 10 years later and thats worth more than 160 bucks for a return visit that they might figure could have been avoided. You might get that $160 a couple times then they will look elsewhere and you lose not just them but any referrals you might get.

The other product I spoke of is TeamViewer, not teamspeak LOL... I used VNC for a long time as well as terminal services and while RDP is the best for general use when you need to connect to a first time client or a system that dosent have RDP running and nobody on location has a clue about their firewall or IP address TeamViewer makes the whole process just about as completely painless as possible. It works by both sides of the client connecting to the TeamViewer centeralized servers which work like a connection broker service so both sides are initiating the connection from inside their respective firewalls which is allowed by all but the most strict firewall rule sets. Try it out, get it on your system and have a friend who has no tech skills down load it on their system and run it, get them on the phone and have them run it and ask for their session and password numbers which it displays in big blue boxes as soon as you start it, enter those on your end and connect and you get right to their desktop, no ports to open, no external IP addresses to puzzle out, no tech terms, just "Hey can you read me the numbers in the blue boxes, OK Ill connect..." and its done... you can even be at a coffee shop or tethering your phone to a laptop and it will work. Slick little system.

I'd like to say I was goating you for a reply, but I was just stoned. I downloaded TeamViewer (holy shit... got the name right this time), but I'll need to devote a day to rebranding the quicksupport software. Looks promising, though. Thanks for the tip!

I've set up automatic backup to external HDDs for clients before. The three time I've done it, one client decided to continually cancel out of the backup process because it slowed down their PC, the second client had a son who formatted the external HDD and moved it to his game room for use with his game consoles, and the third hasn't needed recovery since.

If we're talking data integrity here, I backup to my personal external HDD before I burn the ISOs under Windows. I take a copy home with me and off-load it to my NAS in case they lose their copy. I'd just rather their data be safe in my hands rather than leave the security of their data in their hands. I know that sounds a little spooky where data privacy is concerned, but I've had four clients lose their recovery discs months after I've made them and I was still able to recover their systems.

I just don't trust my clients to listen to me or learn from what I show them. I try anyway, but the more complicated the process, the better the chance the client will bork it all up; and I've seen my fair share of borkery.

[GrimFusion]

Pic Unrelated



I'm bumping the thread.

If you need any questions answered, just ask.

[Deimos]

blue screen on a deep freeze protected vista os ...any suggestions

[bulldog]

blue screen on a deep freeze protected vista os ...any suggestions

BSOD code? Should be easy enough to look up if thats all it is, almost always hardware issue, quite often RAM, but can be caused by numerous things

[GrimFusion]

blue screen on a deep freeze protected vista os ...any suggestions

Next time that BSOD error occurs, write down the stop code (should look like 0x000000X), write it down and post it here.

BSODs commonly happen with RAM errors, but they can also be triggered by IRQ issues, driver faults, or issues with the pagefile.

If this has been happening since the last time you reformatted, or you've recently installed new hardware or updated drivers, download HWinfo in either it's x32 or x64 format, run it, then jot down all of your chipset, audio, video, and PCI device model numbers and download the most up-to-date drivers straight from the manufacturer, thaw your DeepFreeze partition, install 'em, and re-freeze.

If you've been running heavy apps like Photoshop, or anything graphic design, video authoring, or audio editing related, you might have an issue with your pagefile. The page file at its minimum should be exactly the size of your installed system RAM and at most, should be 1.5x the size of your installed system RAM. In other words, if you're running with 4GB of RAM, your minimum pagefile size should be 4096MB and at max 6144MB. Remember 1GB actually equals 1024MB. That said, the page file is tricky business because if you don't set it correctly, your pagefile becomes overly-fragmented and underpreforms. If you have a second hard drive, you can move the page file to the second drive for a performance boost, and it might be a good idea to at least move it off of the DeepFreeze partition even if it is on a multiple partition single hard drive.

...all that said, pagefile settings are available by right-clicking your My Computer icon either on your desktop or in your start menu, clicking "Properties", selecting the "Advanced" tab, clicking the "Performance -> Settings" button, selecting the "Advanced" tab in the new window, and clicking the "Virtual Memory -> Change" button. If you're going to move the pagefile, create the new one first, then delete the default pagefile on the C: drive.

If it's an IRQ issue, we'll need some more info from you at that point. I'll cross that bridge if I have to. Lastly, if none of that has worked, download and run MemTest to test your RAM.