Category: Windows

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Computer Repair Flowcharts

Sept 5 2009 UPDATE TO POST: The author of these flowcharts, Morris Rosenthal, expressed concern about having his copyrighted material shown here. Therefore the links from the thumbnail images below were removed. Please see his Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts site for the full examples of his flowcharts or purchase his Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts book from Amazon.

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Many DC area consultants use flowcharts and work flows in their jobs. If you’re interested in following the diagnostic process of computer repair specialists, take a look at these flowcharts by Morris Rosenthal. They illustrate many of my thought processes when fixing a computer problem.

Boot Failure Troubleshooting

The most comprehensive of these flowcharts is the Boot Failure Troubleshooting Flowchart which encompasses several smaller flowcharts. You can see that it is PC focused, asking you to run scandisk and FDISK on your hard drive. Still, the principles apply to any computer.

Many of these troubleshooting repair processes are illustrated individually in an easier to read and print format:

Power Supply Diagnostics

Power Supplies commonly break, especially if they are hit by a power surge (too much power, such as when hit by lightning), blackout (no power), or brownout (lower voltage power).

A power supply can die over time (booting occasionally) making it trickier to diagnose. Be sure to get a high enough wattage power supply, especially if you have a power hungry graphics card.

CPU, RAM and Motherboard Troubleshooting

RAM problems can be vexing because they might only appear when a particular part of the RAM is accessed. This can manifest itself through strange computer behaviors that are often mistaken for viruses.

Motherboards, known as Logic Boards in the Mac world, hold the RAM and CPU. Without replacement parts, it can be difficult to determine where the problem lies between these three components.

Hard Drive Failure

With spinning disks and moving heads, hard drives will eventually fail. Many of today’s laptop hard drives have accelerometers built-in so that they can protect the hard drive when you are moving the laptop. But the moving parts will eventually break. Studies show annual hard drive failure rates to be 2-13%, depending on usage and particular model used. Over the next 5 years there is expected to be a transition to primarily using solid state drives (SSDs) that can potentially last longer and use less energy.

This flowchart assumes the use of IDE hard drives, which are older than the standard SATA drives in today’s computers.

CD and DVD Troubleshooting

Again, this chart assumes that you are using an IDE connector, not today’s standard of SATA drives.

Other steps in drive diagnosis include:

  1. Listening to the drive. Bad hard drives and CD drives might actually sound bad, with grinding, straining, or clicking noises.
  2. Looking in the Windows Device Manager for driver issues. These may be fixed with new drivers, or might (for older IDE drives) require you to remove or change the setup of other devices.

Video Card Diagnostics

These video card diagnostics assume that you are using a discrete video card, not a motherboard with integrated video which are common in today’s lower cost computers.

Network Troubleshooting

This is another case where it is useful to have other computers available to determine if the problem is related to the network (cables, router, switch) or the computer.

Fixing Computers

These and other flowcharts are in Morris Rosenthal’s book:
Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts Revised Edition: Troubleshooting PC Hardware Problems from Boot Failure to Poor Performance

These flowcharts can give helpful hints to fixing computer problems. Unfortunately, they can’t cover all the latest technologies as they come out.

A couple of things that I do to diagnose and repair computers include:

  1. Testing with replacement parts. If the monitor doesn’t show video, you can hook up another monitor with another video cable to see if it’s the computer or monitor that is malfunctioning. If you suspect a bad power supply, you can try a working one.
  2. Perform a quick Google search. New computers often ship with a driver problem or needed updates that are easily fixed by searching Google or the knowledge database of the computer manufacturer.
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VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player can play any kind of video or audio file you throw at it. Compared to Windows Media Player, it is very lightweight. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

For people who download videos or those who just want something simpler to play their MP3s, VLC is a popular alternative.

Microsoft is promising a smaller version of Windows Media Player as an option when Windows 7 arrives in late 2009. Until then, VLC easily beats it.

VLC is also a useful alternative to the Quicktime Player on the Mac. There are several formats that VLC supports which the Quicktime Player does not by default.

You can run more than one media player on a computer, so give VLC a try.

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Backup your DVDs with HandBrake

HandBrake Rips DVDs

HandBrake is free open source software that can rip DVDs, meaning that it can make a backup of the video to your computer. HandBrake works very slickly and has multiple encryption options and presets for popular formats (ipod, PSP, Apple TV, etc.).

Originally just on Max OS X, HandBrake is now available on Windows.

You can keep your backup on your computer, on a small media device like an iPod, or burn it to CD or DVD.

MetaX adds Artwork

MetaX, also free, adds an image, description, and other info to the video. This allows you to, for example, see all your movies with associated artwork from within iTunes. Unfortunately, MetaX is only available for Mac OS X.

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Missing Vista Recycle Bin

I recently saw a McLean, Virginia, customer’s new laptop with Vista that did not have the recycle bin (trash can) on the desktop by default. She couldn’t find it in the program list or by doing a search for “recycle bin”. Here’s how to get it back.

Right click on the desktop, then choose Personalize. On the left side menu, you should click Change desktop icons.

This will show you the desktop items that you can have appear. Most people will want Computer, Recycle Bin, and User’s Files checked off so that they are easily accessible from the desktop.

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Speed Up Windows XP

Most people who ask me for computer support eventually need one of their computers to just be faster.

There are many cases where optimizing Windows for speed is useful. For slower machines (less than 1.3Ghz) or those with only a little RAM (512MB or less), these tips can allow applications to work faster.

PC Decrapifier

If you have a new PC with lots of bloatware (programs that are unneeded that Dell and others are often paid to include), consider running PC Decrapifier first. This runs a batch script to remove applications. It is free for personal use.

Add Remove Programs

While just removing programs that are on your hard drive does not speed up a computer, it is a good practice and will help if those programs auto-start. It also helps if you are very low on disk space. To remove programs, go to Add Remove Programs (Start – System – Add Remove Programs).

MSCONFIG

MSCONFIG allows control over many startup options. Be sure to only modify options if you understand what you are doing because you can accidentally disable needed Windows functions here. To reach MSCONFIC click Start, then Run, then type msconfig. From there you have a menu that will allow you to turn off startup items.

Startup Items Folder

The startup items folder (Programs – Startup) also lists items that will start up automatically. If you have applications such as AOL, MS Office, or music programs that you use but do not need to always have running, you can remove them here to save your active memory for other applications. Often applications will have helper programs that allow MS Office or iTunes, for example, to start up faster. If you don’t use those applications much, you can remove the applications from the startup folder.

Appearance

You can remove visual effects such as animating windows and having shadows under menus.

Click Start – Control Panel – System – Advanced tab – Performance Settings

From here you can adjust the computer for best performance or remove individual performance options

Desktop Wallpaper

If you have a picture background, you can replace it with a solid color background for a very small performance improvement.

To change your wallpaper or background image:

Right-click on the desktop, click Properties, Desktop tab

Disable Microsoft Messenger

Microsoft Messenger, in addition to taking up memory, can be a conduit for viruses. Messenger is not easy to remove and will attempt to launch when you run Outlook. I recommend using Steve Gilmore’s Shoot The Messenger application to disable Messenger.

Defragment the Hard Drive

Disk defragmenting can be useful when your computer has been used for a while and files are no longer in their optimal location on the disk. You can reach the Disk Deframenter here:

Start – Programs – Accessories – System Tools – Disk Defragmenter

Clean Install

Over time, Windows does become slower. And no matter what you do to clean it up, it may not be as fast as it was originally. So a fresh install may be the only real practical solution once your computer has been used for a long period of time with many programs having been installed over that period.

You will want to back up all of your documents and favorites from your browser before wiping out your system.

Add RAM

If you have 512MB or 1GB of RAM, adding RAM can be helpful depending on how many and what kind of programs you tend to run. Click CTRL-ALT-DELETE and then the Performance tab. From here you can see the physical memory available compared to how much total memory that you have.

Make sure to check how much memory your computer can physically see. This is a limitation of the motherboard and BIOS.

Also, XP’s standard 32-bit installation can only read a total of 3GB of RAM. The less popular 64-bit version, also known as x64 version, can use up to 128GB of RAM.

Buy a New Computer

Okay, this isn’t a very technical solution. But keep in mind that businesses typically replace computers every 3-4 years because beyond this point it is a better business decision to have a faster and more easily maintained computer. So if your computer is old, then consider that purchasing a new computer might be a better use of your time and money. A decent computer costs $500-$1500 depending on your needs. If you do decide that you need a new computer, be sure to properly recycle your old computer.