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I am doing this kind of work more and more these days – backing up customer’s systems and reinstalling Windows and restoring applications etc. after serious malware infections mainly. It can be a tedious (and costly) exercise, but it doesn’t have to be if you have a little technical ability and are prepared to put some time and thought into the process.

Here’s some tips to get you started in the process – sure, I may be doing myself out of a job, but there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of this kind of work, even from more ‘tech-savy’ customers. I think they just can’t spare the time to do it. Fair enough!

What you will need -

1. A way to backup your documents, files and photos to. An external hard drive is the easiest method to use. A good size external drive will cost you around $100-$150.
2. The set of CDs that came with the PC – either a ’system recovery’ set or the Windows CD plus driver and application disks for all the software you need to reinstall after the procedure.

How to do it -
1. Backup everything you require (including your email, address book etc – under XP this is contained in the ‘Documents and Settings’ folder for the various user accounts if there is more than one.
2. Put the recovery CD or your Windows CD into the drive and ‘boot’ from that – you may need to press F9 or a similar key to choose to start from the CD rather than the hard drive – and follow the procedure to reinstall Windows. Choose the option to install a fresh copy rather than repair and I choose the ‘fast format’ method as it takes far less time to complete on the large hard drives that are common nowadays.
3. After the reinstallation of Windows you will need to install all the hardware drivers from the CDs you have (unless you have a recovery disk set that does this for you).
4. If you have any Service Pack CDs (XP currently has 2 available, SP2 and SP3) I suggest you use these to update Windows rather than wait for hours while Windows Update downloads all the patches and updates (not to mention the amount of broadband data you will use!).
5. Finally, reinstall the printer and applications from the CDs you have and restore the backup data. Import the email and address book etc as well.

Now, I have made it sound relatively simple and it isn’t too hard, but it takes time and if you don’t have the necessary drivers and application CDs it can certainly be a lot harder than that – so this is where a good PC tech is worth his weight in gold! It might cost you $120-$150 but the process is a lot less painful.

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Netbooks are becoming very popular but you won’t see Vista on one of these – it’s one area that manufacturers have managed to get Microsoft to agree to continue providing XP – it was either that or leave the market wide open to Linux to exploit.

Now, hope is on the horizon for PC users in the form of the upcoming ‘Windows 7′ which looks to be a very impressive operating system. Seems that Microsoft has listened to the criticism and finally seen that the speed of Vista on lower spec systems is not satisfactory and the crippling security features just aren’t impressing end users at all.

* Windows 7 Preview running on a netbook *

Unfortunately though, late 2009 or sometime in 2010 is the expected release date of the new system – so what to do until then if you need a new PC but can’t afford a higher end model? Buy a computer with Windows XP! There are still some retailers (like me) that have access to XP and a modern Celeron computer with 2Gb RAM and a decent sized hard drive won’t break the bank and they run beautifully with XP – Home or Professional versions (I prefer the Pro myself but Home is satisfactory for most users).

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Unfortunately, many customers have systems from the major manufacturers that  sometimes don’t come with Windows CDs or even ’system restore’ disks or the restore partition data is damaged or incomplete and so the problem becomes even more time consuming and costly to fix. Reinstalling Windows itself isn’t too much of a drama – a reload of the version they have and possibly a phone call to Microsoft to get an new installation code to be able to activate it – it’s the locating of the necessary drivers for the hardware that can be painful. I usually always manage to find the right ones but the online search takes time. A LOT of time!

In summary then, these are the essential things you must do :

1. Ensure that all Windows Updates are downloaded and installed.
2. Keep your antivirus and antispyware applications updated and regularly scan for problems.
3. If you believe you are infected – get it fixed sooner rather than later.

Finally, if you are using Windows 98, ME or 2000 – you are no longer safe online and you should not be using internet banking, online purchasing or any other activity that requires a secure system. There are no more Windows updates available for these systems and no security software can guarantee your online safety if you are using these old versions.

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2. Monthly data.
Broadband providers provide you with a certain amount of ‘free’ or included data in your plan every month. The ‘unlimited’ plans always have a catch somewhere, so you need to ask how much data is included and what the terms are. Some companies allocate you say, 10Gb per month but maybe 8Gb of that is ‘offpeak data’ which means that you can only use this during their specified off-peak hours (often midnight to 8am or similar). Budget plans usually only include something like 100-400Mb per month but an average user should expect to consume 400-800Mb per month just browsing the internet, downloading emails and updating Windows or their antivirus program. A minimum 1Gb (1000Mb) per month plan (speed capped, see below) is more reasonable and you should expect to pay no more than $35-$40 a month for this. Expect to be speed capped or pay possibly double the plan cost a month (see below) if your family includes teenagers though!

3. Excess data charges or speed capping.
This is the crucial element of broadband plans – excess data charges are evil. They are there because the provider wants their customers to go over their data limit so they can reap a totally unfair and unreasonable windfall. Common excess data charges are 15-20 cents per megabyte. Doesn’t sound much does it? But if you go over your 200Mb budget plan by 200Mb you end up being charged between $30 to $40 extra. Charging $60 or $70 for 400Mb is criminal and double what you should be paying. In comparison, capped plans mean that after using your monthly data your connection is slowed to around dial up speed, but you aren’t charged a cent more.

4. Contracts
As with mobile phone contracts, lock-in contracts are common with internet providers. They guarantee the company income for the entire period you are tied to them. My recommendation is to never – never  – sign up for a broadband plan that has a contract of more than 6 months. Forget about the ‘free’ modems or routers they try to bribe you with if you sign a 24 Month one – buy a better wireless router yourself if you need one. It might cost you $120 or so but it’s worth it, believe me. I’ve heard too many people complaining “oh I can’t wait to get away from company X. I’m stuck with them for another 18 months, the service is terrible and I’m paying through the nose!”.

If you still need some help with choosing a plan that’s right for you, visit the Whirlpool Broadband Choice site for an unbiased presentation of all the available plans and companies in Australia.

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However, a critical component which is used in great numbers (around 40-60 on most boards) is the humble capacitor. Used in almost every electronic device to smooth voltage fluctuations and remove interference, they too, should have a long service life. Unfortunately though, faulty capacitors were noticed as a problem with some motherboards around 1999, and the problem seemed to peak in the early to mid 2000’s. Interestingly, in some cases, the root cause of the failing capacitors was industrial espionage gone wrong. Several Taiwanese electrolyte manufacturers (the gell inside most capacitors) began using a stolen formula that was incomplete, and lacked essential ingredients (an anti-corrosion ingredient) needed to produce a stable capacitor.

What are the symptoms – apart from complete failure – of a motherboard with faulty capacitors? If your computer simply shuts off and starts to boot again, or you may be running along when all of sudden the screen freezes, no mouse movements, nothing. Also, if during your normal boot screen you hear a lot of beeps from the system computer that you have never heard before AND you have not added any new hardware or software, this can indicate problems with the capacitors. Another sure-fire symptom is after resetting the system (say after a freeze) the system will not re-post and you have to completely power down then power back up for it to start normally, ie: the reset button doesn’t restart it as normal. My advice is to get it checked as soon as you can or if you are comfortable opening the case (with the power off of course) see if any of the capacitors look like the ones on this photo of a failed motherboard I came across recently. These ones have the familiar ‘rusty ooze’ leaking out the top – but another symptom is a noticeable bulge on the top (the metal tops should be flat) or some that are leaning at an odd angle because they have bulged at the bottom.

Unfortunately, unless your system is fairly recent (and may be under warranty anyway) replacing just the board isn’t often an option as the model or type you have probably is no longer available. Advancing technology means that newer processors and RAM types require different motherboards, so in many cases the minimum required to get your computer moving again would be new motherboard, RAM and possibly video card. I also always recommend replacing the power supply at the same time as you never know for sure that this important component hasn’t preempted the failure.

This article at Wikipedia has more photos of failed caps and a wealth of information.

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‘Ok’ I thought, ‘I’ll just call the helpdesk back and tell them that there are others affected inthe area’. Hmmm…I finally lucked onto one who was actually prepared to listen to me. Every other operator wasn’t interested in my revelations that it wasn’t just me – the standard line was ‘well, there are no reported issues in your area so it must be your modem or computer so let’s go through a painful hour together to prove that shall we?’ (or words to that effect…).

After explaining carefully to this helpful chap he actually rang my customers directly to check the situation (the word of a computer support business operator wasn’t sufficient apparently) and then finally acknowledged that there ‘may be a wider problem than you’ – uh-huh, you think so?!

Turns out that Bigpond (Telstra) customers actually knew about it for a lot longer than the rest of the ISP’s help desks did – a fault in the Nowra exchange had killed all broadband in a wide area I believe. For some reason they didn’t let their wholesale customers (most of the other ISPs) know.

So, in future – I’ll be calling my customers first, getting their ISP details and gathering more than the 2 or 3 that I did this time, BEFORE calling my ISP. Maybe 10 people with the same fault will convince them straightaway, who knows? I suggest you do the same!

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