Does the hard disk light burn and no longer flicker like it used to?

Hard disks are electromagnetic devices which are design to read data really quickly. Some HDD's move the internal platters at 5400 rpm, and some even faster at 7200 rpm. Depending on the size of the disk, the HDD will have more than one platter which spin in unison where read/write heads float over the platters to read the information that is at a certain sector.

When a hard disk is about to fail, these platters slow down enough until the data is read, then start to spin back up to their original designed speeds to read other data. Sometimes the data is unreadable or only readable at a very slow speed, and that's why you find that your hard disk light appears to burn amber, green or red.

If that is the case, you will need to start looking for a replacement drive. You'll find that the longer you keep a drive which is failing the more information you will start to lose and Windows (or any other operating system) will start to behave erratically.

In order to test to see if a hard disk is starting to fail, you can download a linux distribution which is called Ultimate Boot CD, this clever linux collection of tools includes a low level hard disk checker called ViVard. ViVard scans each sector until it finds something bad with that sector. If the sector is bad, the program subsequently marks it as being bad, and continues reading until it has completed the entire hard disk.

This program tries to reallocate the data that resides at the bad sector to move it to a more safer region of the disk. Generally you can fix an ailing operating system by running this tool, but it's best to get our data recovery geeks on the Sunshine Coast to replace your desktop or laptop hard disk.

Buying a new desktop or laptop hard disk is quite easy and in order to make a clone of the information from an old failing hard disk you can use a tool like Norton Ghost or even a free linux version called CloneZilla.

SSD Drives - Do they make good upgrades?

SSD drives have hit the market and are becoming quite affordable. They offer incredible seek speeds over traditional HDD (hard disk drives), albeit at a more expensive price tag. SSD stands for Solid State Disk. These drives use memory modules to store data similar to the way a camera would store photographs on a memory stick. These drives have very little in the way of seek time unlike electromagnetic devices like hard disks. Therefore these drives access the information stored in blazingly fast times making Windows 7 or any other operating system an absolute dream to work with.

The other benefit of such a drive is that the thought of defragging your hard disk is no longer applicable. These drives must not be defragged, because that would limit the life span of the drive. It appears that the life span of these drives is way shorter than a typical HDD.

However SSD's are not for every one. The price tag is rather high and the storage capacity is nowhere near the affordable of say a 1TB. However not is all lost. SSD do make good upgrades to an old lagging computer. The secret is to install the operating system on the SSD drive and at the same time placing the mostly used programs on this device. You use a HDD to store photographs, documents, and movies.

Replacing an old SATA drive in a netbook caused the netbook to loads Windows XP (from BIOS to Windows desktop) in about 5 seconds. So the advice would be, purchase a 32 gig drive, reinstall your operating system on this drive, and enjoy the benefits of faster load times and write times.

Becareful - these drives are fairly new on the market, and stability might be an issue, so try not to store anything of value.

So if you interested in getting your computer upgraded on the Sunshine Coast, give our geeks a call by visiting out website.

Cannot get your wireless connection manager to work in Windows?

Our computer geeks came across an interesting problem where the Windows WLAN server would fail to start and an error code would popup saying Error Code 1114. Now that error code only means something to Microsoft and not the man on the street. To further add to the confusion, it shows the following message "Error 1114: A dynamic link library(DLL) initialization routine failed."

Immediately our computer geeks suspected that a file might be corrupt or missing. So in order to fix this problem you need to check that all the windows operating system files are correct. In order to check this, you need to do the following;

1) Click on the start bar
2) Type CMD.exe
3) Before you press enter, you'll notice that the CMD command has been found as possible program to run in the search results.
4) Hover over the cmd result at the top, and right-click, choosing to "Run as" or "Run as administrator"
5) Deselected the "Protect" option if applicable and run it
6) Now type "sfc /scannow" and press enter

This process is the system file checker tool, which scans each core operating system file to see if it's missing or corrupt. Eventually it will come across the missing WLAN service files, and replace or repair them. Once that is done, try restarting the WLAN service, or restarting your computer.

We offer computer repairs in Tanawha aswell as the rest of the Sunshine Coast.

What's making that BEEP noise coming out of my computer?

Firstly in order to understand what the BEEPS mean you need to understand what the "BIOS" is all about. Let our computer repair geeks explain a little..

The BIOS is a program built into a computer to control its operation, especially the booting of an operating system. Most computers let the user configure various BIOS options by means of a special screen or set of screens.

The first thing that the BIOS does when it boots the PC is to perform what is called the Power-On Self-Test, or POST for short. The POST is a built-in diagnostic program that checks your hardware to ensure that everything is functioning properly.

The following table map of BEEPS can help you diagnose a problem;
1 short beep = Normal POST - system is ok
2 short beeps = POST Error - error code shown on screen
- No beep = Power supply or system board problem
- Continuous beep = Power supply, system board, or keyboard problem
- Repeating short beeps = Power supply or system board problem
1 long, 1 short beep System board problem
1 long, 2 short beeps Display adapter problem (MDA, CGA)
1 long, 3 short beeps Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA)

For a more comprehensive listing of BEEPS following this link.

To test this, you could take your memory out from your motherboard, power on the computer, and you'll most certainly hear a BEEP or two.

So if you find that your computer is faulty, and the computer is sending out more than just the one normal beep, then give our Computer Repairs geeks a call on 07 5457 0541.

Is your machine under attack from viruses?

In most cases a good anti-virus tool will detect 99% of all viruses in circulation, but every now and then, a brand new virus will slip through undetected, infect thousands of new computers, only for the anti-virus companies to play catch up.

Virus Removal Buderim

Such a case of a brand new virus hit one of our clients even after a new version of anti-virus was installed a month prior. A trojan horse had infected two of the core main operating Windows 7 files and the anti-virus detected them on open but slowed the netbook down to a grinding halt.

The only way to fix such issues is by booting a linux rescue disc (look for AVG rescue CD), use midnight command to browser your NTFS/FAT based partition, delete the infected Windows 7 .exe's. Once you've done that, boot with the Windows 7 installation disc, select 'Repair options', select the option which says restore from a previous system point, press cancel, which should then give you access to the command line option.

Then type sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows

This command will scan for missing/corrupted Windows 7 install files, and replace them with fresh new ones from the install disk. The virus will obviously have been removed, allowing you to reboot your operating system, and then performing a full scan for any other potential threats.

So if you need help removing viruses, spyware or malware from Windows give our Computer Repairs Geek a visit at www.buzzageek.com.au.

Computer Repairs Sunshine Coast

Our computer geeks on the Sunshine Coast deal with loads of new technology and often never have a problem in dealing with problems. A client of ours in Twin Waters has been having erratic USB problems with his old machine, so we he suggested we put together a new machine, have it installed, transfer all the  necessary programs etc. Our computer repairs Geeks tried everything to resuscitate this ailing machine, so finally the client decided enough was enough and asked us to build a new machine.

We chose, what we believed to be quality components, ASUS motherboard etc. Put it all together, and it worked like a dream, the machine was burnt in for 24hours and showed no signs of problems. We delivered the machine, setup the 8 additional USB devices, and left it working perfectly. Except, the machine now randomly HANGS up analysing the USB ports on reboot.

The solutions to the problem was to head into the BIOS and set the "Perform Quick Boot Up" to disabled and lower the USB bus speed. After that all his problems have disappeared.

Trust the Computer Geeks Sunshine Coast to resolve all your business/home computing problems.

Got the technology.. why not use it

Recently our Computer Repair geek went to watch a movie at BBC in Maroochydore. The weather on the Sunshine Coast was poor, and it had been raining all weekend, so we decided that a movie was a good idea. Now getting to the Sunshine Plaza was difficult enough with parking difficult to find...

Patiently we finally made it to the cinema, only to be confronted by long queues, and hundreds of people. We thought we'd be smart and book our tickets online via our iPhone. We thought that by sitting down, logging onto the ticket booking system and getting our tickets, the pain of sitting in queue for hours would be all over in a matter of minutes. We thought we'd be smart. We were wrong...

The BBC hasn't invested in new age technology, they have no App Store application for iPhone's older than 3.2 and there is no iPhone friendly web application. Booking the tickets had failed through the normal website not just once by TWICE...

The BBC invests serious amounts of money into their normal web systems that they have forgotten about the emerging markets. A market that is more mobile has access to the internet from anywhere....

To cut a long story short.. we had to join the queue.... :( But technology should have made our lives more simple and less frustrating... somehow the BBC has made it more difficult and more frustrating..

So BBC call on our geeks to help with iPhone web development sometime.. :)

We’d be more than eager to help.