Busy, busy, busy.

Today was one of those days, busy, but definitely a good problem to have. Had 5 people contact me regarding laptop repair. The first customer had a cracked LCD screen on a Gateway W350A. The next customer had a more challenging issue for an Acer Aspire 5670. Her fan was failing with itand could not find a replacement anywhere. It took about 40 minutes and a lot of searching vendor's inventories but I found what I believe is the only in the US. Hers shouldn't be too difficult to replace. The next one is a Dell 6400. Another broken LCD screen. The 4th one today was a Compaq Presario with a bad LCD screen. Finally, the 5th one today was another Compaq Presario with a bad inverter. Whew... what a day. Think I'll be busy for a couple days.


BRM Laptop Repair
3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202

www.BRMLaptopRepair.com
laptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901

Dell Latitude, Compaq Presario, Gateway

Today I picked up a Dell Latitude(has broken LCD) from a customer who did all the right things. He backed up his hard drive data, checked to make sure his computer worked with an external monitor and kept the laptop meticulously clean. In his case there was an accident and the entire computer's screen looked like a work of art when powered up. There were spidercracks all over the screen and it displayed black and white spots all over the screen with some rainbow colors sprinkled throughout. Typical LCD replacement if I've ever seen it.

The Compaq presario had met a similar fate but you could still see half the screen. Being a 17 inch display the price was going to be a little higher than the Latitude described before.

The Gateway is a completely different story. This was not in good condition at all. The laptop was given as a gift from the owner's Mom. The battery was dead and there was a virus on the computer. Batteries are notorious for dying prematurely if you use the laptop as a laptop. What do I mean? Plug in whenever you can. Batteries in laptops have a certain amount of times that you can recharge them before they go bad. The new MacBoook pro's are able to be recharged 1000 times before being replace. The competion, about a 3rd of that. Use your laptop like a desktop as much as possible and use the battery for backup power alone and you'll extend the life of the battery to a much longer time and when you do need the backup power, it'll be there.



BRM Laptop Repair
3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202

www.BRMLaptopRepair.com
laptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901

Toshiba parts, LCD Compaq Presario & DC Power Connector

Today's kind of been a busy day for calls. One person contacted me about getting a battery & a hard drive cover for a Toshiba Tecra 8200. The next call was about an LCD on a compaq presario that had cracked and he needed it replaced. Later on in the day I received a call about replacing a DC power connector. Looks like my weekend is getting pretty packed.

BRM Laptop Repair
3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202

www.BRMLaptopRepair.com
laptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901

Compaq Presario 1800 & Bad Hard Drive

Had a couple of customers today. One customer stood out in my mind as I have had problems with inverters for different customers. She had the typical symptoms where the laptop would be fine until it had remained powered on for a few minutes and then the screen would go dark. For this type of failure it could be 2 different issues. The giveway that it is either of these issues involves using a really bright flashlight shone at an angle to the screen. If you see a faint image then it means you either have a bad backlight in the LCD or the inverter is bad. The backlights are made to last a really long time and unless you noticed your screen was pink on bootup the problem lies with the inverter 99% of the time.

Well enough about that. The other customer had a bad backup hard drive. It was very necessary for the customer to have it as his business files for taxes were all on it. This time it was completely unrecoverable without having a clean room. To properly fix this it would mean disassembling the hard drive and putting new reading heads and stepper motors into the drive. This kind of cost can be in the $500-1500 range and has to be done in a clean room. While this is expensive nothing can be too expensive to replace documents, pictures or any other special memories on your hard drive so please consider some sort of backup plan for your data.

Keep posted for other laptop & computer related problems. Peace out

Ben Martin

BRM Laptop Repair
3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202

www.BRMLaptopRepair.com
laptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901

Computer Upgrade & LCD replacement

Recently an embroidery company contacted me with a request to upgrade his computer. He is currently using an old 486 computer that is connected to embroidery equipment that is just as old. This will be a fairly involved upgrade as all of his backup files are on floppy disks and all working files are saved to his hard drive on the 486. There can be no downtime as this is his business and with baseball season right around the corner embroidery business is about to reach it's peak period. This is a very critical upgrade since it is not a matter of if the hard drive is going to fail, but when. With a computer that is over 12 years old and used every day, it could happen anytime. I'll be posting more on this job as the day's progress.

The other computer that I was contacted about was a Gateway E475M that needed an LCD replaced. This one is a pretty straightforward repair and I don't imagine seeing any issues with replacing it. The story behind this one is pretty typical. Laptop was just sitting ther minding it's own business until a dog decided it would look better sitting on the floor so the dog assisted. The LCD broke and then the owners called me.



BRM Laptop Repair
3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202

www.BRMLaptopRepair.com
laptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901

Dell Inspiron Laptop

Recently I repaired a Dell Inspiron Laptop. This one had a virus. The user had attempted to remove the virus himself to no avail. It took 5 hours but eventually I was able to remove the trojan virus that had embedded itself in several parts of the registry and even backup restore points the user had created. It's no wonder he couldn't remove the virus since every time he would reboot the computer would be reinfected from one of the backup restore points. After this windows would finally allow the computer to update itself. In addition, there were quite a few things slowing the computer. One of the biggest problems I saw was he had 2 antivirus programs running. I removed both, one was non-updating and the other I've never heard of, and installed AVG Antivirus from www.download.com. After this and a couple of tweaks the laptop sped along doing what it needed to do for the user. Another job well done.

BRM Laptop Repair
3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202

www.BRMLaptopRepair.com
laptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901

Acer Aspire & Thinkpad T43

Okay, the problem with the Acer Aspire is an easy one but as with all the other DC power jack repairs I've done it's very time consuming and attention to detail is very necessary so that no screws are left behind.

The other computer on the other hand has been a little more interesting. It's an IBM Thinkpad T43. I'm pretty sure I talked about it in a previous posting. Aside from the LCD issue and the dead bios battery the software has been a little challenging. For one, defragment(which I strongly recommend!) was not able to run. The fix for this time was easy. I ran a checkdisk on each of the two hard drives and rebooted the computer so the checkdisk could be thorough. After rebooting defragmentation was now allowed and all was well with the world. On top of that there were a lot of problems with background programs starting up and good ol' CCleaner(www.ccleaner.com) came to the rescue again. Many, many Window updates later the laptop was zipping along nicely and booted up pretty quick too.

Now I know this is a laptop blog but I've got an interesting case for a desktop issue this weekend that a friend referred me to. The problem was this; a newly built computer was having trouble when turning the computer on. One symptom of the the problem was that it would take successive pushes of the power button to turn the computer on. More than likely what is happening is that the power supply, while rated @ 650 watts, can't handle the startup of all the devices in the system. It may be able to supply 650 watts when up and running but not from a cold boot. The solution, research, research, research. Don't buy a $300 motherboard, $250 processor and then buy a $20 power supply. Anyway, that's my desktop helping for you, I'll try to keep those to a minimum.



BRM Laptop Repair
3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202

www.BRMLaptopRepair.com
laptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901

IBM Thinkpad T43

Hey all, just received an IBM ThinkPad T43 that has a few issues with it, mostly software. It starts up very slow and responds to commands even more slowly. I think this is a good example where Ccleaner will come in handy to track down different unnecessary applications starting up in the background. The Thinkpad is also having an issue remembering the date. This is something controlled by the bios and means the lithium battery connected to it(not the main laptop battery) is failing and needs replaced. Sometimes you get lucky and it's accessible through a small panel on the bottom somewhere. That's not the case with the T43 since I have to remove the keyboard to get to it. Always be careful since the battery is connected to the motherboard and touching the motherboard has the potential to cause ESD damage to it. Since I will be removing the laptop keyboard anyway to remove the display to replace a failing lcd, it's going to save the customer some money while I do 2 things at the same time. The real costly item here is tracking down the issues slowing down his computer. Thinkpads are always fun to take apart since they are built so well. I love looking inside these things.

BRM Laptop Repair
3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202

www.BRMLaptopRepair.com
laptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901