Paul's Tech Talk

How to repair a computer after a power surge

PaulAugust 9, 2021

Computer repair after power surge

Is that even possible? There seems to be some questions about that with a few friends of mine. We’ve been talking about this and I thought I’d would bring you along for the ride. If you didn’t have a Uninterruptable Power supply(UPS)(Amazon Affiliate Link), then maybe it is time to buy one. See my affiliate link of all the possible UPS that Amazon has. The problem with some computers is that they have so many things that could happen that you might not really know what could of been hit. I’m going to walk through some possible areas where to look for burns and or shorts in the system to possible know what you might need to do to get your system back up. Be advised this is only a way to tell what might be the problem and it may be worse than you can know just by looking and seeing.

Power Supply

The first place I always look is at the Power supply. Since that is where electricity is designed to go to. If you push the start button and the power supply doesn’t even turn on, than you might have a blown power supply. You can however check the motherboard and memory but I usually check the PSU when I suspect the power supply might of gotten hit by lighting or a surge in the system. The PSU does have a fuse inside it that might of blown. That is usually something you will not be able to get at. However if you have another PSU you can use to plug into the system than you might be able to know if the PSU is the issue in the first place. Do you need a new PSU, why not check out my Amazon Affiliate link and see if you can find another one for your needs.

Depending on your system setup

If you suspect that it was from your LAN(Local area network) network that you got the power surge, than I would start looking inside the computer around the LAN connection. Some people use WIFI and it will not cause any problems but if you use a LAN cord to connect to the internet that is the next place to look at to make sure it’s not burned or any black areas around the connection. If that’s the case the Motherboard will most like need to be replaced but that is if nothing else works. You’ll probably need to buy a CPU and motherboard and depending on your setup the GPU. If the GPU was close to the LAN, than that might need to be replaced too. With the high prices of GPU’s this could get really expensive really fast. However if the system turns on and still refuses to post without errors, you could always try to problem solve the motherboard issue before you switch it out. Even my Gigabyte b450m ds3h(Amazon Affiliate Link) motherboard wouldn’t be to hard to replace if I had to but I would have to buy another i9 LGA 1200 CPU which would cost a lot.

Motherboard powers on

If the motherboard powers on and you’ve done the problem solving for the motherboard. The last thing I usually try is to remove everything possible besides the CPU and one stick of RAM to verify that there isn’t anything that might not be working. If you do that and it boots then it’s either the RAM(Random Access Memory) or the GPU (Graphics Processing UNIT) if it has one in the first place. If however you get the CMOS or CPU FAIL error than the motherboard or the CPU is bad and at that point the only good option is to replace the motherboard and everything else associated with it. You can however try to use the CPU and memory on a new motherboard if you want to know if they are good but I usually just replace it completely because you never know when those other parts will fail and than you will still have repair and upgrade the system at the same time. You probably won’t be able to find the same CPU again unless you buy it second hand.

Well these are the area’s I usually look at when I suspect either a power surge or a lightning strike has just happened and my system won’t boot or even start due it. If it happened to you, I feel sorry for you but you should either invest in a UPS or a extension cord that has a circuit breaker to prevent you system from being fried.

Did it happen to you? How did you handle it or was it worse than you thought? I’d love to hear how you solved your issues and what it was like to have those issues. Why not leave a comment and talk about it. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter and receive notifications when I post new content.

Some advice for new computer technicians

PaulAugust 7, 2021

We can’t do this alone!

This is the most important idea that you should understand. Most computer technicians think that they have to do it alone when it comes to problem solving an issue. It is because no one can ever know how to fix every possible problems that may arise. Those are the times we should ask question and ask for help from other technicians. This will help you even more than you might imagine because some other technician might know how to solve the issue or problem that you are having. We might never really understand what someone else might know. This also includes customers, because what one customer might not know another one might.

Research is everything

Sometimes even other technicians might not know what is causing the problem. So use everything at your fingertips. Don’t underestimate the power of word search in Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It isn’t like one search engine is better than another. Each search engine has some information that some others might not have. Don’t just use one but should always use all of them. Sometimes one search engine will not have the answers, so I will always go and check out two or more search engines for a possible fix for the issues.

You will have angry customers!

No one tells you this but no matter how nice or good you are, you’ll have those angry customers. You should be prepared to deal with them. I say this with some experience, no matter what you’ll do for a customer there will always be those who know nothing about computers and then get mad at you for some reason or another. You’ll need to learn to be patient with an angry customer. Learn to come up with ways to alleviate the stress or anger from the customer. My go to phrase when a customer is angry or stressed is “Here’s what I can do for you . . . “. If you tell the customer that you can do something for the customer even if it is something small, it helps with making the customer feel like they are being heard. Also learn to active listen to the customer and make sure you hear what they say by repeating back to them the problems they are having. Also sometimes the customer is going to just need to vent and be angry. Technicians should learn to just be there for the customers.

Computers will break!

This is the next thing you will learn being a technician, that no matter how careful you are going to be with a computer, You’ll break a system just by doing something you’ve done a billion times. If it can be broken, it will be broken. Murphy just likes to make people’s life harder, and we will always have those days. I can say with certainty that no one will ever be perfect at solving problems or fixing the issues. I’ve seen motherboards break or CMOS fail at the most unusual times. So you should be prepared to always apologize to the customers or say your sorry and make it right, even if it’s not your fault. Sometimes customers will want to feel like they are important to you and that helps keeps the customers coming back.

No technical jargon

No matter how much you know or think you know, keep the technical jargon to a minimum with customers. Most of them aren’t even going to know what you are talking about if you don’t relate the problem to the customer. I can remember several times when I heard someone tell a customers about a command or hardware and the customers eyes just glaze over because they just don’t understand. Only tell the customer what they need to know, if it’s a customer error, teach the customer and try to prevent them from creating the problem again.

I’ve been in the computer world a long time and I am sure the old and new a like will agree that these are some valuable tips for those who might be interested in being a technician. Nothing I’ve said here will stop angry customers but it might help. What’s some things you’ve learned to help with customers not getting angry or make the customer happy? I’d love to here what helped you with customers and I am sure others will too.

Security News for this Month and How that affects you!

PaulAugust 5, 2021

Hackers get around TPM

According to Arstechnica, a hacker was able to get around TPM in under 30 minutes. It seems impressive for someone to be able get around something that Microsoft thinks helps secure your operating system. I’ve been doing some major research into how secure is the TPM and secure boot.

Getting around the TPM in this manner is akin to ignoring Fort Knox and focusing on the not-so-armored car coming out of it. — Arstechnica

Fort Knox is way better than a TPM, it just means that people don’t realize the vulnerabilities of the the TPM. It is still relatively new and people just haven’t had the chance to thoroughly test the trusted platform module.

BlackMatter is Reborn

With Revil and DarkSide getting shut down, we now see that BlackMatter could really be just a simple name change from Darkside.

And sure enough, a recent detailed forensic analysis of the cryptographic algorithms being employed by an apparent newcomer named “BlackMatter” suggests that BlackMatter is actually DarkSide 2.0. — Steve Gibson

It seems that they have left the affiliate model and now are looking for the IAB(initial Access Brokers) to be able to infect computers and networks that might bring them some great revenue from ransomware. Ransomware is getting more and more common and I can guess that they will start to use something like this to infect companies computers. I doubt they will infect targets that are going to be bring them to much attention.

Print Nightmare is a feature not a bug!

I keep saying this but the Print nightmare that is being talked about last month will probably never truly be fix because Microsoft created this issue in the early days so people could easily print to any system. Microsoft has been trying to fix some of the issues but I doubt they will ever fix them all. The idea that it is a zero day, is something that Microsoft didn’t expect but most researchers would have said it was probably possible for several years at the least. I am sure this will be used with a number of other things such as the Boothole exploit. Although this has already be patched by most Linux distro, there are some that just won’t update due to not being able to or wanting to. So there are going always have people who will not see a need to update their systems. .

The First 6 months

Most researchers have said this but in the past 6 months there has already been more attacks than last year. Although most of malware and ransomware writers were all just like everyone else watching what is going on in the world and covid19. They probably weren’t very busy last year and now they need to fix that by showing us how much more they can do. I am sure it will even be better the next 6 months but I am also hopeful the Russians government will keep putting pressure on the virus writers to keep their acts clean and leave companies alone. I doubt it but I can only hope.

What’s your thoughts on all that has happened this year? Do you think it will slow down or get even faster? Do you think we will see more computers getting compromised even with TPM and Secure boot enabled? Let me hear your thoughts.

How my blog experiment helped me and why!

PaulAugust 3, 2021

Photo by: Kevin King(Chandana Perera) on Pixabay

“Failure is always an option” — Adam Savage

Blogging is always a part of experimenting with what people will read and do. I really don’t say that lightly because no one can ever truly know what will happen when you blog about a topic or come up with blog titles for your blog. You could have the most boring blog but have the most readers because it has so many people who think like you. I find that to be mostly true, the blogging niche is something that has always fascinated me when it comes to readers. Who your readers are can be some of the best supporters of your blog or the worst depending on the niche.

The niche of things

What’s a niche, you might be asking? A niche is according the the Cambridge dictionary is “an area or position that is exactly suitable for a small group of the same type:“. What does that mean might be different to some but mostly it is a group of people who think or has the same kind of thoughts about a subject or idea. For instance, I like security or even talking about Windows so I have people who like to read about that or maybe you are a technician who might need to know how to problem solve a situation. Each of these people has a niche in a particular area and maybe even like to read what I have to say from time to time. Understanding the niche is something that comes with experience and time. It can’t really be seen but it can be used to grown your blogging experience.

Blogging helps me!

I can say since I started this experiment, it seems to have grown my readers base. I also have found the blogging alone has helped me to research and understand what is required to do an essay. While I am in school the teachers seems to want to make the students write essays as much as possible. It has been a great help to me to have been blogging for so long that I understand how essays are being used to get students to research their area of expertise. I think that it gives students a chance to make sure they are going in the right direction and that they will want to do the jobs when they are done with the education. It’s been a great education experience for me since I haven’t been to college for 20+ years. It has definitely changed over the years and I am sure that even now it will change in the future.

Water flows in many Directions

I can’t say that it isn’t something that not everyone will understand. Blogging is like water, it will flow through people or around people who have little interest in the topic at hand. I’ve learned a lot about my readers and who my readers are just by doing this little experiment. I know what people like to read or even why they might like to read the posts I do. I intend to keep this up in the future to help draw more people to my blog. I am hopeful that it helps me to create even more connections with my readers. I hope this blog has done you some good. I am sure this will be an interesting year for everyone due to what happened last year.

What would you like me to talk about? Maybe you have something you want me to talk about or maybe you have a question. Why leave a comment or send me a message on twitter at @laforge129.

My Initial thoughts on Windows 11!

PaulAugust 1, 2021

It’s like pulling teeth!

I finally installed Windows 11 Windows Preview build into my system. Later last week I was wondering what they had done with Windows 11 and requirements. So I thought it would be a great idea to try to install Windows 11 with my current system that I built last year. Thanks to building this system just last year and thinking ahead, I got everything I could to prepare for the future needs. I even made sure it had TPM 2.0 just in case, I thought I’d not need this. I guess I was completely and most definitely wrong. I will say after talking about how to update Windows 10 to GPT and Secure Boot, that part went rather smoothly. I did find that if you have a Linux partition and a Windows partition then the converter will not be able to work. I had to erase the Linux Mint Distro partition to be able to convert it to GPT. I however divided the size to possibly install Linux mint along side Windows 11. I am curious to see just how well that will happen. That’s my next step in the next few days.

I didn’t like the setup

After converting the partitions and joining the Windows insiders program, I was able after a few attempts and fixing the CMOS. It seems strange that I had to keep going into CMOS to enable even more things than I initially thought. I had to enable secure boot, UEFI, and PTT (For those on Gigabyte Motherboards). It wasn’t easy to say the least, I’d update one and the other and find out I had to enable more in the bios so Microsoft would see I met the requirements to download and install Windows 11.

Privacy is a Real concern!

I know on my Windows 10 system, I didn’t have my account linked to Microsoft but when I installed Windows 11. It automatically linked my account to Microsoft. I’d think if I am upgrading to Windows 11and it sees that it was a local account it would not link it to the Microsoft account. The Bad news was I had to delete that account and remove all the data so Microsoft wouldn’t be watching me. I had to re-install all my apps and loose some of my personally files but it was worth it to keep the information safe. I wish I could of had an easy way to go back to my local account without having to jump through so many hoops.

It’s Just isn’t that good!

So far, after only using this for so many hours. I can’t see any major differences that I will like. The Start button will be an issue because I just don’t like it in the middle. Also finding what I might need in the Settings is a little bit more interesting and difficult for me because they looked like they buried some of that. I have also noticed the Windows 11 hack to revert my Windows start menu doesn’t work. I’m going to try the Windows 11 preview builds some more but I am not that impressed with them and I might just go Windows 10 when Windows 11 finally get’s released unless they allow the users to use windows there own way, like No TPM, Or Secure boot. I hope Linux will hurry up and make it easier for people to install Linux along side Windows 11. I am almost sure there is a way just haven’t had time to explore the possibility.

Boot Times

After install Windows 11 and using my NVME drive, I have found the boot times to be a bit longer. That was to expected because of the encryptions that is being used to quote “Secure” windows from any virus tampering. I can’t see this being an extreme issue but I don’t like the fact that it takes several more seconds on my NVME to boot up Windows when it would just boot almost instantly with my NVME. They better fix that problem also because I don’t care about their so call security if I am sitting there waiting for the system boot. All in All the Windows 11 experience isn’t as much a good thing as a bad thing. I already know Virus writers are creating viruses to get around the so called security and I have done some research on the topic. I can’t wait to say to Microsoft “I told you so“.

What’s your thoughts on Windows 11? Have you tried it? Will you install it even with the TPM and Secure boot requirements? I’d like to hear your thoughts on the issue. Why not leave a comment and tell me what you think about Windows 11.