Technical advice on PC please

Lipsticklady

Hi all,

I brought my computer to a computer guy in March as it was running extremely slow. The guy told me that he had upgraded the PC to run windows 2000. However, in April the computer kept starting up with a blue and white screen telling me to insert the reload disk (which I did not have as he owned this). Due to a number of various reasons I never did anything to the computer until yesterday. I brought it back to the guy and asked him to look at it. I explained that it probably just needed the disk reinstalling but when I returned to collect the PC he asked me for £60! :mad: Am I being unreasonable? I asked him to detail the problem in writing as when I spoke to him he kept saying that it was obviously due to the fact that I didn’t shut windows down adequately and bombarded me with technical info. :eek: Can any one offer me advice?

Thanks in anticipation,:hello:

Lipsticklady

“Hi,

When I fixed the PC in March I added an ethernet card and an extra 256MB
to bring it upto 512MB and reinstalled W2K from the DVD that came with
it onto another 40GB disk I had spare. This time round the computer
failed with a BSOD (STOP: 0x0000007B (parameter, parameter, parameter,
parameter) INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE) of which one of the causes can be a
virus but other reasons can be; addition of new hardware, adding a new
device driver etc (as per the Microsoft Developers website).

I removed both harddisks from the system and placed them in an external
USB caddy and used a known good system i.e. mine to run chkdsk/f on each
one. This reported several problems with the NTFS disk but fixed them
and reported no problems on the FAT based disk. I also ran uptodate
anti-virus software over both disks which reported no issues.

In the meantime I attached an old harddisk to the system and installed
Ubuntu Linux onto it which was successful. This was to check that the IDE
controllers on the motherboard were OK and the IDE cables hadn't been
damaged.

I reinserted the two original disks and the computer booted to the login
without incident and subsequently logged in OK. In my experience NTFS
can be susceptible to power outages whilst writing to the disk leaving
the NTFS in an "odd" state. The internet is legion with such errors and
why I use laptops or computers with UPS on the power supply. My home
bult server uses Linux with the ext3 file format which is considerably
worse than NTFS and definitely runs on a UPS.

I would like to note that when I fixed the PC in March I charged for the
parts I added and the disk was free. As I was working for HP at the time
As the NTFS disk had 250,000+ files the anti-virus scan took a while.”

Cerro

£60 ain't bad for what he has done... from the way I have read it, he has saved your data and fixed your damaged hard disks. Alot of repair guys (who don't really care about their customers) would have formatted the disks and reinstalled windows - you would have lost all your data. Or worse, binned the disks, charged you for new ones and the time for reinstalling the OS.

If it had been a simple case of sticking in the boot disk and letting it self repair then he could have done it for free or maybe a nominal fee. As I remember recovering Windows 2000 was never that straight forward in any event...

pchelpman

Cerro wrote: »

Windows 2000 was never that straight forward in any event...

I would agree with this statement.

If the repair man has done all he said and your computer is now working fully & correctly then I would say £60 is a good fee.

However, don't pay anything unless it is working as it should.


You should also could consider upgrading to the (much better) XP operating system (not forgetting to backup & save all your data first).

A copy of XP home should be found at reasonable prices ... e.g. ....

http://www.microwarehouse.co.uk/catalogue/item/MSOEM100?cidp=Ciao&utm_source=ciao&utm_medium=pcc


PCH

[Deleted User]

Sounds like he spent quite a time with it. You'd never mind a plumber charging you 60 quid for a few hours work, why get upset a PC repairman has charged a similar amount?

pchelpman

ringo_24601 wrote: »

...plumber charging you 60 quid for a few hours work

Round here £60 would probably for ONE hour's work. Plus materials, of course.