Fix My Computer

Many computer manufacturers offer warranty for their products, which covers all kinds of damages. The most important thing to remember is that most of these warranties don’t refer to your software and/or personal data you may have on the computer.

Data recovery is not a standard service, and it’s offered only by specialized companies. Unfortunately taking your computer in for data recovery will void the warranty given by the manufacturer, so the first thing you have to focus on before thinking about fixing a broken computer is you personal data.

Ideally you make daily backups on an external hard drive or network storage, so when your computer breaks down you’ll lose a days work at most. The truth is that hard drive technologies are significantly improved every year, but they still do break down even without any exterior factors. The average life of a hard drive is around 7 years, meaning that some break down after a few days, moths or year, while others become obsolete in perfectly functioning condition. Personally I still have a couple of 1-4GB hard drives from the ’90s which still don’t have any bad sectors. I use them instead of Flash Drives for installing operating systems (like UBUNTU) on computers, because they are much more reliable. Transfer rate is not so great, only 3-5MB/s, while flash drives have already broken the 100MB/s barrier (on USB 3.0 interface).

Theoretically if you have all your data on an external device you may bring the computer to an authorized service where it will be repaired in a couple of days. Some computer manufacturers also offer on-site repair, meaning that a technician will show up at your place in 24 hours after your call and will not leave until your computer is up and running again. I know that most Dell laptops and desktop have this kind of warranty. Very practical for most users, but let’s also look at an amateur solution, done at home by anyone who can use a screwdriver.

If you don’t have a backup of your data, the first thing you do after you realized that your computer has a hardware defect is taking out the hard drive and trying to copy important data onto another computer.

The perfect tool for this is a USB to IDE/SATA adapter, which can connect any laptop/desktop hard drive to any computer with a USB port. As you can see it has two IDE connectors, one is for small laptop hard drives and the other for desktop IDE devices. The SATA pport can be connected to any SATA1/2/3 device, including optical drives too. There’s usually a power supply in the retail package of the USB to IDE/SATA adapter, and it can provide about 30-40Watts of power, supporting 99% of laptop and desktop IDE and SATA drives. Before connecting a hard drive taken out of a supposedly defective computer, make sure you have a good antivirus software on the other computer, just in case.

After you connect the drive and everything seems normal, the operating system detects it, the first thing you do is find the most important files and quickly copy them onto the healthy computer. If the hard drive seems to be in perfect condition you can continue to copy all the other files you may need too. If for some non-hardware reason there aren’t any visible files on the drive, you can use one of the equally efficient recovery tools like OnTrack EasyRecovery.

These programs can scan the entire surface of the hard drive for any recoverable data including deleted or partly damaged (overwritten) files.

At this point you should have all your files copied to a secure place, and you can begin diagnosing the problem of the defective computer.

The simplest way to do that is to keep cheap replacement parts at home, for example a $10 400Watt power supply, a processor cooler for ~$5, a small hard drive for ~$35 and maybe a 1GB memory module for $20.

If the computer fans don’t start up, the first thing you do is replace the power supply. If this helped and the computer powered up, you should insert an OS installation disk into the optical drive and try to install it, but remember that some components may still be damaged, permanently.

At the end of the OS install process you should also install all necessary drivers, and after that use a diagnostic or benchmarking program to test all system components. Most benchmarks stress the components just enough to break them if they have the smallest problem. Logically if one test fails, you should replace that component with a spare, and you’re out of the woods.

The hardest problem to diagnose is any non-fatal mainboard problem, when the computer boots up, but after a while it starts giving errors. I have seen many such cases. Errors caused by a defective USB port, SATA controller, IDE controller, Floppy controller …etc. that doesn’t show at the POST (power on self test). The damaged chips simply overheat, and stop functioning after a while. If your computer has these symptoms and all other components have passed the tests or benchmarks, than you’ll need to search for a compatible mainboard (or return it under warranty of course). If the computer is less than 5 years old you should have no problem finding a much better and also cheaper mainboard, which will serve you for another 1-5 years.

Perhaps I should have started this article by saying that no computer with a hardware problem is fixed in the traditional sense. Today most authorized professionals simply replace the processor, hard drive, optical drive, mainboard … etc. so no actual repair takes place. If the problem is software related, than you may call it a repair, because no physical component gets replaced.

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