Archive for category Computer Hardware

What To To If the Screen on Your Laptop Dies

The first thing to do is consider the age of the computer. If your system is getting close to 4 or 5 years old it might not make much sense economically to repair the computer. If you want to save the data on the computer that is easy enough to do but that is for a future post. Let’s say that your computer is newer, just after the warranty expired, odd how often that happens. Then there is two ways to go depending on how you use your computer.

If you just use your computer at home, never travel with it and leave it plugged in all the time, you might consider just getting a new monitor. By new monitor I mean a flat screen computer monitor, and not fixing the computer screen at all. This approach has the advantage of not needing to tear apart and install anything. You also can get deals on monitors, whereas you will need just the screen made for your computer it replace the screen on your laptop.

Finally you can replace the monitor yourself if you are comfortable working on your computer. You will need to look up the model number of the replacement screen and then do some tear down on your computer, but the advantage is you can have a fully restored laptop that you can take with you anywhere.

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My Printer Isn’t Feeding Paper!

What can you do if you have a printer that no longer picks up paper from the paper tray? If you have an inexpensive inkjet printer most folks would say through it away and get a new one. However that is not always what you need to do. If you have a can of compressed air you can blow out all of the paper lint that collects in the rollers. Also the rubber on the rollers can start to harden you can ruff it up a bit with a cheap and common green kitchen scrubbie. You can also get a product for around 6 dollars called Rubber Renue, that will help to restore the rollers to a more pliable state that will pick up the paper once again.

These same methods will work with the rollers on a laser printer or just about any printer that is having basic paper feeding problems. Some problems will require a complete replacement of the rollers in a more expensive printer. But what do you lose from trying right? So see if you can save yourself a few bucks and get your printer rolling like new.

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Beware Electronics Salespersons, they don’t know nuttin

I was just in a store we shell leave unnamed talking about the latest netbook offerings they had. As usual I knew more about the technology than the sales clerk. He was talking about the slow speed and I mentioned adding a stick of RAM. That is when he told me the computer wouldn’t handle another stick of RAM it would probably nuke the whole system. Now I know that a lot of netbooks only have one RAM slot, but you can put a larger stick of ram and it will definitely perform better. Some netbooks even come with two slots, I was forced to wonder how many people he had told that garbage to. How many people believed him because he was the sales clerk and had on a nice little name tag.

All I can say is please don’t listen to someone just because they work in an electronics store. The week before they were probably selling T-Shirts. Ok, rant over all better now.

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Looking for Legacy Device Drivers in all the Wrong Places?

One of the biggest problems I run into when reformatting a computer harddrive is finding the right drivers for all the components afterward. Maybe you have had that problem. System drivers can be elusive and search engines can’t always help you find them. I will tell you one of my sources for good system device drivers. Try Driverguide.com they provide a comprehensive list of legacy drivers and current drivers. It is a free service, if you start a free account which I recommend.

The end of last week I was looking for the drivers of 2 different Windows XP systems that had legacy drivers and driver guide had them all. So if you find yourself in a bind go check them out.

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What is wrong with Netbook Computers!

I have a friend who just got a netbook and he likes it except for one thing. It is very slow! I have noticed that most netbooks only have 1 gigabyte of memory, and they run Vista or Windows 7. The problem is, that is the minimum memory for that OS. It runs much better with more. So if you are getting a netbook make sure it has a least 2 gigabytes of memory or, you can install more later for pretty cheap as long as the netbook can take more than one stick of memory.

Basically they are really minimal computer systems, you may need to upgrade a few things to make it run well. You will absolutely
need to upgrade the memory if you only have 1 Gigabyte for it to run well

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