Hey Everybody,

Today I would like to talk about a special mode your computer has called, “safe mode.” Depending on the model of the computer, if you press F8, F10, or F12 while the computer is booting up, your computer will put windows into safe mode.

Safe mode is a wonderful tool for all sorts of problems, especially when windows won’t boot up normally. In safe mode, you will see your regular windows desktop, but lots of your other features will be disabled. Going into safe mode can be a great way to get rid of viruses that won’t let your computer turn on, or to replace missing files that might’ve been deleted from your windows installation (assuming you still have your windows disk).

So, the next time you can’t get your computer to start, give safe a mode a shot and try troubleshooting your problems from there. That can be the difference between a costly windows re-install, and a few annoying hours killing a virus.

Thanks,

-Zac

Hey Everybody,

Today I would like to talk about laptops, and a few of the very common misconceptions people have about them.

1) Batteries – Your laptop battery has a very short shelf life. A laptop battery only lasts for 18-24 months, depending on how carefully it is used. Performance will degrade slowly (about 1% a month) until somewhere around the two year mark, when it will fall off a cliff. To keep your battery living as long as possible, avoid having it plugged in for days on end without being discharged. If your laptop just sits on your desk, take out the battery and only put it in when you plan to use it. Batteries like to be used, and they get upset when they aren’t. Unlike with cell phone batteries, however, laptop batteries are much less picky about when in the power cycle you charge them. It is okay to plug in a laptop at 50% power, you do not need to run the battery all the way down.

2) Hard Drives – Laptop hard drives have a general shelf life of 3-5 years. They do not tend to last as long as desktop hard drives, I presume (although I have no facts to back up this claim) this is because they suffer so much more trauma from being beaten up and bounced around a lot. You should always be backing up your data, but this is especially true if your laptop has reached this age range.

3) I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. Laptops are not invulnerable. Be careful with those screens! We do many screen replacements here every week and they are very expensive. A new screen usually costs at least $100, often upwards of $200, and they take 1-2 hours to install. So, don’t carry your computer in your hands, put it in a case, and keep it safe! Even a “small” knock can do a lot of damage.

Thanks for tuning in, come back tomorrow for more tips and tricks!

-Zac

Hey everybody,

Today I would like to talk about upgrading versus buying new. People are often unsure if it makes more sense to throw out what they’ve got and spend $1,000 on all new stuff, or if they should just spend $200 on a new graphics card.

The key when making this decision is to look for what we call, “component mismatch.” Your computer only has four critical parts that determine how fast it will run. These are the motherboard (your computers spinal collumn), the hard drive (your computers brain), the graphics card (your computers eyes) and the RAM (your computers intuition…I know, the analogy doesn’t hold as well). Component mismatch is the process we use to determine if any of those given components is substantially older than any other. If, for example, your motherboard, ram, hard drive and processor are all 2005 models, but your graphics card is a 2001 model, we have a mismatch.

Mismatches are great, because they can save you a lot of money. If, in the above example, I now install a 2005 model graphics card, your computer will run much faster because the other components are no longer being held back by the slow graphics card.

If, on the other hand, your computer is slow, but all the components are of roughly the same age, an upgrade is a bad idea, because you would need to upgrade everything, so why not just buy a new computer?

The only thing to keep in mind is that sometimes even if an upgrade would help, it is not financially a logical decision to make. For example, lets assume you have a mismatch, and the problem is your processor. Well, maybe your motherboard is not capable of taking a faster processor, so to fix the mismatch you would need to install a new motherboard as well. Well, maybe the new motherboard requires more power than the old one, so to fix this mismatch you would also need to replace the power supply, and at that point, you’ve bought half a computer.

So it is important to know not just what upgrades you need, but which are actually possible, and then to make the best decision about what to actually do.

Don’t worry if any of this sounds complicated, though, because you have our number (503) 282-5185, and we are happy to help you make the call!

Thanks,

-Zac

Hey Everybody,

Today I would like to talk about the most important part of your computer that you have probably never heard of: the registry. The windows registry, despite being a very small file (smaller than most word documents) controls everything that you do on your computer. It contains all of your license keys, so that you don’t have to validate your software every single time you open it. It contains all of your file associations, so that every time you click on a .doc file, microsoft word opens to read it. It also contains millions of tiny instructions that you wouldn’t even know were there until they stopped working.

So today I want to talk about the kind of trouble the registry can bring if it gets out of whack. One client recently called and said that his CD-ROM had stopped working. This is very strange, because the CD-ROM drive has no drivers, all CD-ROM drives are controlled by windows and it is very rare for them to fail. The problem for this client ended out being a product called “Roxio EZ CD burner and creator.” Roxio, when installed, makes an automatic association with your CD-ROM drive. So every time you put in a CD, Roxio would open to read the CD. Well, when Roxio was uninstalled, the uninstaller program did not remove the registry keys. So, every time a CD was put in the drive, the registry said, “okay, CD in the drive, open Roxio” and thus nothing would ever happen, because Roxio was no longer installed! So, I had to go through the registry and manually delete all of the keys related to roxio, so that windows, the next time it looked at a CD, would say, “hmm, CD inserted, no natural assocation, so I will restore the windows defaults” and then it opened the CD.

The registry, more than any other part of your computer, is responsible for why things slow down over time. Peices are being constantly added to your registry every time you install a program, and often times when you uninstall they are not removed. So over time, your registry becomes bloated, and slows down your entire computer. This is why it is so critical to only install programs you really want, it will make your computer last longer, and go faster.

T

Hey Everybody,
Today I would like to discuss with you the two major reasons never to check your computer at the airport: theft and damage.

The first thing you need to keep in mind is that things are stolen, often and frequently, from checked baggage. Computers are a prime target for theft as your bag goes through the underbelly of the airport. Keep in mind that the airline has no legal responsibility to compensate you for anything stolen from your bag, in fact, they are likely to call you a liar and slam the door in your face. Computers are expensive, lightweight, and difficult to trace, so they are right up there with digital cameras and jewelry for stuff stolen from suitcases.

The second, and probably more important thing you have to worry about is damage. We get many calls from people every week who put their laptop in their checked baggage and get it back to find it badly damaged. Just today I replaced a cracked laptop screen from somebody who had put their laptop in their bag, neatly wrapped in clothes, and had it damaged besides. Keep in mind that your baggage is not treated nicely by the airport employees. They are underpaid, overworked, and they know they will never suffer any consequences for damage done to your property.

The other thing to always remember is that your laptop is incredibly delicate, and very easily broken. It is tempting, when the lid is closed, to think that your laptop is in some sort of protective shell, well, it isn’t. Even a moderate “thwack” to the lid of a laptop can crack the screen, (a $150 part that takes 1-2 hours to replace!) and if you drop it? Forget about it, your hard drive can serious falling damage. So don’t be fooled by the turtle-like nature of a closed laptop, it is not very well protected at all.

So that is todays repair lesson, really an anti-repair lesson, keep your laptop with you at all times on the plane, and don’t be tempted to think it is invincible, or even terribly well protected, just because it has a lid on it.

Thanks,

-Zac

Today I would like to talk about one of the most unused tools in Portland computer repair: defragmenting. A lot of you have probably heard that term before, but lets talk about what it really means.  Hard drives are very simple creatures. Think of a harddrive like a closet with shelves. Every time you save a file, it takes up or more shelves. When you delete a file, those shelves are made available for other files.

That is all very simple, but suddenly in gets tricky. Imagine you have two empty shelves, but a file that requires three shelves. Well, your hard drive, simple creature that it is, will put 2/3 of the file on the two empty shelves, and then the third file on another shelf, somewhere else far from the first two.

So, now we have two one file, but in two locations. This means every time you try to access that file, your computer has to work twice as hard! If that file is in three places, that means your computer has to work three times as hard to access it.  This slows your computer down dramatically.

Luckily there is a solution. Defragmenting (available for free on your computer in start->programs->accessories->system tools) takes all of your data and puts files next to one another. So if your file is split up into 3 places, it will bring all three p

Small business users are often stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to Portland computer repair. On the one hand, as a small business, you don’t have a lot of money to do big infastructure projects. On the other hand, you need to keep your computers up and running even more than the big boys, because one computer out for a day might mean that 25% of your staff can’t do their jobs!

So what are a few things you can do to make sure your entire office is working well? The biggest investment you can make in this persuit is a high quality firewall for your office.  The internet is the source of the vast majority of your problems, so protecting your network from intrusion should be your top priority. A firewall is designed to look at all incoming internet traffic, and filter out anything bad. If you’re really strapped for cash, you can install something free like http://www.tallemu.com/product_overview.html on each of your company computers to keep the bad guys out. However, if you can pony up even a little bit of cash, just about $400, you can get yourself a small business sonic wall for up to ten users. This is a totally idiot proof solution, because there is almost no setup. You simply plug your internet connection into the sonicwall (it’s a physical thing about the size of your cable modem) and then plug from the sonicwall into your network. That easily, you have security that is almost as good as any corporate level enterprise network.
So there you have it, you can protect most of the computers in your office with either good free software, or better yet, one little box for all your troubles.

Here at Happy Hamster’s Portland Computer Repair, we get a lot of calls for advice every single day. By far the most common question is this: “My computer is running slowly, what can I do to speed it up?” There are many Portland Computer Repair companies, but we want you to know that we recommend these tips before calling anyone.

There are a few basic things you can do to speed up your computer. First, your computer requires that at least 15% of the hard drive be empty to run at maximum speed, so make sure the hard drive has at least 15% free space (you can look at this in my computer by clicking on the hard drive). Second, file fragmentation can really slow down your computer, so run a defrag (under start > programs > accessories > system tools) to optimize your system. Third, viruses often slow down a machine, so run a virus scan and make sure your computer is clean.

Many people wonder what they can do before they call us to get the diagnostic process rolling for their own unique Portland Computer Repair issues. We totally understand this urge, nobody wants to spend more time on the phone than neccesary! And, again, we recommend that you consider these points before calling any Portland Computer Repair company.

Today we are going to talk about the single biggest thing you can do to speed up the diagnostic process, and that is to narrow down the problem. There is no computer problem that can not be fixed, most of computer work is not the actual fixing, but the part where we figure out what is wrong! Oftean times people will call with very vague problems that may sound impossible to fix, “my computer is running very slowly” is the most common. Well, there is no one specific response to that question, but if we can narrow down the issue often times a solution shows itself. For example, if you report computer slowness, check and see if every part of your computer is running slowly, or maybe just certain specific applications. Maybe you don’t mean your entire computer is slow, but rather your internet is slow, or your e-mail is slow. Maybe your computer is not slow until it has been on for a few days without being reset. In all of these instances, narrowing down the problem makes it much easier to identify and fix. So, if you want to save everybody some time (and yourself some money!) do your best to narrow down your problem.
Of course, it goes without saying that if you are having trouble, or don’t feel comfortable narrowing down your own problem, we are happy to help, and just a phone call away with our free phone consultation service.

Many people wonder about what they should expect the first time they call a Portland Computer Repair company. First, let me address the most common concern: we do not judge our clients, or what is wrong with their computers. Many customers call with a defeated attitude, as if their unique computer repair troubles are somehow their own fault! Nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, when you call Happy Hamster Computer Repair, a friendly representative (either one of the owners, Zac or Zia) will answer the phone, and ask you to describe, in your own words, what is wrong with your computer. After you have described the problem, we use our own personal knowledge base to start digging into your symptoms to help narrow down a specific problem. If you say the problem is that the computer won’t turn on, then we will start to look at the possible factors that could cause that: is the computer plugged in? Have you tried a different plug? Have you recently experienced a power surge? And so on. We work with you to dig down into the problem and try to arrive at the root cause over the phone, so that when our agent is on site, he can spend as little time as possible to get the problem fixed. Our agents are helpful, and never judge or blame you for what has gone wrong with your computer, so give us a call today, and we will be happy to provide a free phone consultation!