Direct MP3 Download: Podnutz Daily #64 – Water in the Dell
As promised:
Steve’s Clean Up Routine
Dell Inspiron 1721:
Customer spilled a glass of water on it.
Did the right thing:
Pulled out the battery & AC Adapter
Held it upside down and shook out the water.
Used a hairdryer on it.
Did the wrong thing:
Powered on after only 3 hours.
These types of spills/issues
The laptop needs to be taken apart and dried properly
BEFORE you power it on.
It powered on for the customer
but certain keys on the keyboard would not work.
After taking it apart and finding/cleaning corrosion
Keyboard needs to be replaced. $30 on Ebay.
Customer tried to partition his desktop hard drive.
It crashed on him and would not boot.
Error: NTLDR is compressed
My Dad, Cook, found the fix for this.
He will email me the link and I will share it with you.
CitizenX might have found it while doing show notes:
NTLDR is compressed
Cook knows all about Google Search I presume!
More on the iMac power supply that needs replacing:
Instead of replacing the whole PS I replaced the four bad capacitors.
I had parts via mother boards I had lying around. Exact specifications.
Tedious work. Three hours. Still not tested.
Will test after the podcast.
In hindsight, I would have spent the money for a new power supply.
Voice mail from Barbra aka CitizenX:
She comments on the work I do
downgrading Vista to XP
and wondered if I warn the customers about
the lifespan of XP and how long MS will support it.
I answered I do not warn them.
They come in wanting this service
.. and I give it to them.
Cool News!
A fan of PodnutzDaily sent me a
battery-powered Black&Decker leaf blower!
THE ONE I WANTED!
The sender remains anonymous.
I have his full name but am not sure if he wants me to announce it.
THANK YOU!! That ROCKED!
It WILL be used in the shop!
Email from Kyle aka ChuckerNorris:
Tip on making a hard drive visible wirelessly.
Dealing with a laptop with no optical drive and usb 1.1
and trying to install Ubuntu.
I give Kyle some tips.
Email from Ricky:
Ricky throws down a thumb on extended warranties
.. that cover hardware only.
If your hard drive goes bad and Dell has to replace it
they do not load Windows, printers, ect.
They simply check to see that the HD is being recognized.
The non-savvy customer then has to find a shop to do the installing.
NOT worth the extra money.
PS: Try Malwarebytes.org all ready!!
Email from Simon:
His email sends along that link he mentioned last cast
that will supplement the drivers that DriverPacks misses.
You can get these third party drivers via Simons link
Email from Craig:
Talks about PageDefrag
I talk about what defragging your hard drive will and will not do.
Email from Kevin in Ireland:
Unknown audio in the background while accessing the internet via FireFox..
.. and it is not always family friendly.
I do not get it running the Opera browser.
Tip:
Try uninstalling and reinstalling FireFox.
Or better still run my cleaning routine to see if that removes the issue.
Email from Hanrad:
He wants to know how to back up a Windows profile.
There is no one-click app that I am aware of.
Backup the following:
Documents folder, internet bookmarks and Outlook files including both addresses and emails.
Email from Jack:
He wants to know how you find out if a BIOS update is available.
And how do you install it?
Bios updates covered in Podnutz #19
Live call from Eric:
Eric empathises with Alex who shared his oops stories and shares his.
He also mentions a caution while blowing out the system with a leaf blower.
Pay attention to the fans. Do NOT let them spin out of control.
This can damage the system board.
I talk more about customers trading in their computers.
