+----------------------------------------------------------------------------- + |COMPUTERGLITCH.NET - oooooooooooooooooOooooooooooooooooo - COMPUTERGLITCH.NET | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ -+ General Computer Repair White Paper +- Updated: 10/7/2010 o- Abstract This white paper is an attempt to document a step by step process IT professionals can follow to ensure the best possible outcome of computer repair. This document can't cover EVERY problem, it is more to serve as a guideline to help the IT professional not miss any important areas during the troubleshooting process. o- Guideline 1. Open the machine, dust it out completely with an air compressor. Inspect the motherboard and video card for blown caps. Insepct all fans to make sure they are in proper working order. Take off the CPU fan and inspect the compound, if it is home built, lord only knows what you'll find. 2. Test the power supply with a digital power supply tester. If it tests good, still open the power supply, look for blown caps. Blown caps can cause very sporadic issues. 3. See if machine will power on / boot. If it doesn't power on, or hangs on post, remove the modem and NIC if it's a separate card, when these are blown by lightning it will cause no post. For BIOS beep codes refer to the following site: http://www.bioscentral.com/ 4. Ensure the hard drive is mounted properly with 4 screws installed, less than that and the vibrations will cause the drive to go bad. 5. Test the memory with Memtest86+. Test the hard drive with either MHDD ( freeware) or Spinrite (paid but well worth the price). If both of these check out ok and you've made it this far your problem is most likely a virus/ malware. 6. Perform an offline virus scan using one or all of the following programs: a. Avira Rescue CD OS: Linux Download: http://dl.antivir.de/down/vdf/rescuecd/rescuecd.exe b. BitDefender Rescue CD OS: Linux Download: http://download.bitdefender.com/rescue_cd/ c. Dr. Web Live CD OS: Linux Download: ftp://ftp.drweb.com/pub/drweb/livecd/ d. Kaspersky Rescue CD OS: Linux Download: http://devbuilds.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk/ e. VBA Rescue CD OS: Linux Download: ftp://anti-virus.by/pub/vbarescue.iso 7. If you can boot into Windows run the following antivirus/malware scanners: a. Malwarebytes Download: http://www.malwarebytes.org/ b. SuperAntiSpyware Portable Scanner Download: http://www.superantispyware.com/portablescanner.html c. ComboFix Download: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix d. CWShredder Download: http://free.antivirus.com/cwshredder/ 8. Look under Program Files, Program Files/Common Files, Users/UserName/ ApplicationData, Users/Username/Local Settings/Application Data for suspicious directories and rename/delete any suspicious entries. Use msconfig to check the startup entires for any odd programs. Reboot. 9. Boot back into windows. Run HiJackThis!(http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/) remove any suspicious entries, found by HiJackThis! Reboot, anything left? If so, remove manually with a bootcd such as Knoppix. 10. Check the internet connection if it's acting flaky you may need to repair/ reset Winsock and TCP/IP: a. Windows 2000/XP Download: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html b. Windows Vista/7 cmd> netsh winsock reset catalog (resets winsock entries) cmd> netsh int ip reset reset.log hit (resets TCP/IP stack) 11. Install all Windows Updates, update all system drivers, try browsing the internet for 2 or 3 minutes. If all seems ok, reboot one last time, and be sure you can browse the internet still. All done! o- Useful Information 1. Common Blue Screen Issues: A. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (0xA) a. If this error is coming up BEFORE windows loads it is most likely due to a hardware/driver problem. You will most likely need to perform a repair install. b. If this error is coming up AFTER windows loads you should try disabling ALL startup options using msconfig and see if the problem happens again. B. Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM a. The typical fix: http://www.computerglitch.net/bin/microsoft/system32_config_system-fix.html C. The following boot issues can typically be fixed using the link(d) below. a. Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information. b. Windows NT could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: Winnt_root\System32\Ntoskrnl.exe Please re-install a copy of the above file. c. Winnt_root\System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt: Please re-install a copy of the above file. d. The above can be fixed with: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314477 2. Forgotten password utilities A. Offline NT Password & Registry Editor a. http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/ 3. If the computer still seems sluggish upgrade the RAM to the following recommended amounts: a. Windows 2000 - 512MB+ b. Windows XP - 1GB+ c. Windows Vista - 2Gb+ d. Windows 7 - 4Gb+ NOTE: This paper is meant for guidance not a de facto standard. Good Luck.