Computer Repair Recommendations? (Houston)

[Slight Clutter]

Okay, so my laptop died. Well, actually, it's not fully dead; it's alive enough to take pleasure in giving me fits. Basically, all was fine and good until last night. I was trying to upload photos to the computer and it just froze on me. I spent one hour turning the computer off and then back on...only to have it freeze again...no matter the program I was opening. I did manage to do a system restore, but it gave me an error message in the process (something about the E Drive not being able to be repaired), and ultimately it didn't correct the situation.

Now for the question...

Does anybody know a good, not-too-expensive repair shot in Houston (for a PC)? The closer to Clear Lake the better! Thanks. :)

[JamesB]

it could be a variety of things. could be a bad HD, memory, or mother board.

it could have even been a virus/trojan causing the problem

I dont know of any PC repair places besides best buy, but I would not trust those guys

have you tried to start the PC in safe mode? if so how long does it run?

if you can get into safe mode with out any network support you should change the msconfig settings

to do this do the following

start-run- (type the following in the run box) msconfig

when the system configuration comes up do the following
General TAB - click on diagnostic startup
then clock OK and restart the PC and let it boot up. if you still have the problem you can go back to the system configuration and go to the services tab and uncheck anything you dont want to load up, and the same on the start up tab. lots of the services NEED to load so the system will run, so if you are not familiar with this area its best to not mess with it.

James

[robert t]

If all else fails Vic's computer does laptop service. It is off Westpark and Hillcroft in business center behind WB39 TV

[ggmex4wd5sp]

"start-run- (type the following in the run box) msgonfig"

I think JamesB means MSCONFIG

[JamesB]

yikers..... I has MSG on the brain today after lunch

it should be MSCONFIG

James

[Slight Clutter]

James, Robert, Dan -- Thank you so much! I went ahead and did the MSCONFIG, and it got me to a happy place. :) So far, so good. I don't have internet capability anymore, but I'm hoping I can just reinstall it? Anyway, I think I'm at least in a place that can hold me over until I get back from vacation mid-month. Again, thank you, thank, you!

[JenJohnson79]

I know a guy who's excellent with computers that you can call if you're interested. Let me know and I'll get you in touch with him. He's been fixing my computers (yes plural) for over 10 years now. . . Everything from viruses, to mother boards. . .

[JamesB]

Originally Posted by Slight Clutter

James, Robert, Dan -- Thank you so much! I went ahead and did the MSCONFIG, and it got me to a happy place. :) So far, so good. I don't have internet capability anymore, but I'm hoping I can just reinstall it? Anyway, I think I'm at least in a place that can hold me over until I get back from vacation mid-month. Again, thank you, thank, you!

ok good to hear. but you are not out of the woods yet. the reason the internet is not working is changing the configuration in MSCONFIG shuts down some services (internal PC processes that give out instructions to hardware and software to perform certain things) from starting on your computer.

if your PC will not run a lot longer with out shutting down one of the processes that was turned off in the MSCONFIG is more than likely the root cause of the problem. its just gonna be tricky to find it if you dont know what all the processes mean

im not sure what you are wanting to re-install?


what is the "E" drive on your system? is it a CD drive or something else?

honestly a system restore may not have been the way to go if you are having a hardware problem. you could have a bad memory chip or something else wrong like your hard drive could be getting close to being full or the CPU fan may not be working.

James

[ggmex4wd5sp]

The good news is if it is basically working after "msconfig" it is not a hardware failure but some misconfiugred software, virus, spyware, etc. As time allows slowly go through each items that was disabled and re-enble it. Just do few at at time, reboot and do some basic operations. My guess you can narrow down the culprit. A little googling can tell you what the program does and you can either try to re-install to repair it or even just delete it.

Let me know the results of you efforts.

dan

[Charles Putnam]

Slight Clutter - your problem sounds similar to what happened on my wife's laptop. Seems somehow she landed on a malicous website that installed a trojan or bot, that creamated the whole thing. Yeah...I had security in place, but it wasn't enough.

Fortunately, I had just backed everything up, so she didn't loose everything.

Had to do a complete reinstall (including reformatting the HD) of everything, but it was worth it.

Depending upon which OS you're running (I'm assuming it's some version of Windows), best recommendation is to keep it up to date with all patches, and make sure you have good security in place (i.e. antivirus, spyware protector, firewall, etc). Personally, I'd stay away from Norton.

[Slight Clutter]

Thanks, everyone. I'm taking off on vacation tomorrow, so I might use this as a somewhat mandated break from the ol' computer. I will, however, try to bring back a program at a time and see how that works for me. I'll look online first to see what I'm actually bring back. If that seems too much for me to handle (I'm not at all computer savvy), I'll take it in when I get back.

Again, thank you so much. You have all been very helpful, and I appreciate it.