San Diego Computer Repair

The importance of Data Backup

February 23rd, 2011

It probably should go without saying, but even in the days of inexpensive backup solutions, too many users still do not have an active backup of their data. This means at any moment a nasty virus, or hardware malfunction could wipe out all of their data. These types of problems are very random, and can affect any computer! We have recently even had a customer with a 6 month old machine have the hard drive fail entirely. The cost to recover data was nearly 3 times the cost of the computer.

How do we solve this problem? It is very simple, and there are many options to come across!

External Hard Drives

The most simple form of data back up. Many external hard drives today come with software you can install that can determine what files need to be backed up, and how often they need to be backed up. I typically recommend Seagate, as the software has been so far the easiest to set up. These devices are getting less and less expensive by the day. I recently purchased a 1 TB external drive for $60. $60!

Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Several networking companies (Netgear being one of the bigger ones) offer these products. The way this works is rather than being attached directly to any one particular computer, the external drive is connected to the network, allowing any other computer connected to your network to not only access the drive, but use it for backup. Very handy if you have more than one computer at home or in your office.

Cloud Storage

This type of storage is a little newer, but quickly becoming a great choice in data backup. Rather than storing all of your data on a drive in your home (which is also susceptible to physical problems, expecially fire!) you keep it all on a remote server, offered by a specific company. The most popular service is Mozy, and it is very easy to use. However, Microsoft has recently launched their own Cloud service, called SkyDrive, which offers up to 25GB of free storage. You can use this to sync a Windows 7 Phone if you have one as well.

Posted in Computer Support, Data Recovery & Backup, Main Blog | No Comments »

Liquid Spills – Dead on Arrival or Repairable Problem?

December 14th, 2010

Liquid spills are amongst the most damaging issues you can have with any electronic. After all, water (and therefore most other liquids) conduct electricity very well, bridging components together that very much don’t want to be bridged.

Of course, the easiest way to avoid this problem is to simply keep liquids away from our computers, especially laptops that are more easily damaged. Lets face it though, we all grow a little lazy after a while when it comes to keeping liquids at a great distance, myself included, and that glass of water, or can of soda slowly creeps its way closer and closer to our beloved laptop.

You’re in luck, though, as most spill situations are solvable. However, a few initial steps need to happen to lessen the chance of permanent damage:

Force shut down the computer by holding the power button until it turns off.
If the system is a laptop, remove the battery so that power no longer can go to the system at all
Bring the system into a repair shop that is comfortable with liquid spill cleanups.

In most situations, the liquid itself does not cause any damage. However, especially with liquids that have sugars in them like juice or soda, the sugar can crystallize and create corrosion on the system, which can cause conductive bridges between the small components on the boards inside the computer, which can then cause a short, or can burn components when the power is restored.

If the system is properly cleaned before this is able to happen, then you can save your system from what would seem to be certain doom. If you cannot, most of the time the damage to the system board is unrepairable (or at least not within a reasonable budget to repair) and would result in a need to replace a very expensive component. Upon reaching this point, you can have your hard drive removed to recover data, and move into a new system.

Tags: Apple, coke spill, computer, desktop, laptop, Liquid, Liquid spill, Mac, milk spill, netbook, Notebook, PC, soda spill, Tablet, water spill
Posted in Computer Support, Laptop Repair | No Comments »

Droid Pro – Blackberry killer?

November 11th, 2010

We all know about the apparent Smartphone wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft, and RIM fighting it out for our business.

RIM, the creators of the Blackberry, are struggling to hold on to their dying market, only really held on to by business users who are typically keen on the Blackberry’s two major features: the qwerty keyboard, and Blackberry Messaging (BBM).

If you are unfamiliar with BBM, it is a text messaging feature that works between Blackberry’s in realtime, offering a more seemless texting experience, where the app posts the time in which a user receives a text (very useful for important messages) and works very much like an instant messanger.

Enter Kik, the cross platform application that works with Apple, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry, that offers nearly exactly these features, for free. Sure there are still a lack of certain features, all of which you can follow from Kik’s website that are in development, but this is step one to nearly eliminating the Blackberry’s market.

Now enter the DROID Pro, pictured below, which offers nearly all the features of a Blackberry phone, with the more popular Android operating system. Couple this and Kik and you have effectively destroyed the barrier around Blackberry phones.

Tags: Android, Apple, Blackberry, Cross Platform, DROID, DROID Pro, Kik, Messanger, Microsoft, RIM, Windows Phone
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Google Chrome OS and Smartbooks

November 4th, 2010

With the phenomena of netbooks and now more recently tablet computers (not the old school flipscreen Windows tablets, but the iPad and subsequent competing platforms) we find ourselves more and more drawn to smaller devices that can fulfill out daily computing needs.

Nowadays, 90% of what we do is on the internet. Think of a time recently that you used your personal computer otherwise. Not too much there, unless your a gamer. Most of us are avid You-tubers, Facebook fanatics, twitter fiends, or just your basic email users. Of course, you can use your home computer for this, but more and more lately we are being driven towards smaller, more portable devices. Smartphones like the iPhone, Android phones, and soon the Windows 7 Phone. Tablets like the iPad, the new Pre tablet HP is working on, and soon some Windows 7 Tablets. These products are all innovations in their respective fields, and have changed the way we look at computer.

Google, however, is creating a paradigm shift, rather than just an innovation.

Introducing Google Chrome OS, which is rumored to become available this month, is a new netbook / tablet operating system that changes the way that your typical computing is done. Take a look here:

If you have used Google’s Chrome web browser, you should relatively familiar with the look and field of Chrome OS. This being one of Google’s primary goals, is to make their operating system easy to use and intuitive, like you had used it before.

Start up time is huge, with a total time of under 7 seconds on average, you can be up and running in no time. Sure beats the minute I have to wait on average to start using my system at home.

The biggest feature is what will be considered the paradigm shift, and that is that items you work on while on your computer, such as documents, spreadsheets, or pictures aren’t actually saved on your computer, they are saved in the Cloud, online, instantly as you work on them, making them available to you at any time you can access a computer. This benefits us in several ways: first, if your computer is lost or stolen, not only is the data incredibly difficult to hack, but you can be up in moments with a new machine simply by logging in. Because your information is stored online in the Cloud, it is retrieved with your account, and you are up and running. Second, this eliminates the need of massive amounts of storage on your computer, which allows us to do away with the old mechanical hard drives which have a high failure rate in laptops and netbooks and move into the newer, solid state technology, which is faster and has no moving parts.

If you find yourself a little more interested in this technology, go on You Tube and search Google Chrome OS. There are some great technical demos that will show you what you can do with these devices.

Tags: Chrome, Cloud, Google, Google Chrome, Google Chrome OS, netbook, OS, Smartbooks, Solid State, Tablet
Posted in Laptop Repair, Main Blog | No Comments »

Laptop Screen Issues

October 28th, 2010

I’m sure we’ve all seen atleast one instance of a laptop screen issue, whether it be cracked, no longer lighting up, or have a glitchy image that’s solved only by physically moving the screen. Of course, fixing these problems would be less daunting if they could all be solved by replacing the LCD. But what happens when you replace the LCD and the same problem is still happening?

There are typically four main components that help to display video on your laptop. The motherboards video output, the LCD ribbon cable (attaches the LCD to the motherboard), the inverter board (inverts DC power to AC power), and the LCD itself.

Here are a list of some common problems that can be associated to each of these components. Keep in mind, the same issue can be caused by different components, and the only way to test these is to work with some known working components.

Motherboard: Artifacted images (can be duplicated by plugging in an external monitor), no display, no backlight, wrong colors in the screen, shifted image, fuzzy image. — Some of these issues can be resolved by simply updating video drivers.

LCD Ribbon Cable: Distorted image ( can be partially remedied by moving the screen around), flashing connection, no backlight.

Inverter Board: No backlight, red hue in image.

LCD Display: No display, no backlight, red hue in image, flashing connection, distorted image, shifted screen.

Use some of these guidelines to help discover the source of your issue. Of course, the easiest way to determine the source of display issues would be to bring your system in to ITZ Solved for a free diagnostic.

Tags: Cracked, Display, inverter, laptop, LCD, motherboard, netbook, Notebook, ribbon, Screen
Posted in Laptop Repair | No Comments »

Windows Phone 7 – Office

October 20th, 2010

At this point I think any avid phone user has seen or at least heard of the Windows 7 Phone operating system. You’ve probably seen some of the great features the phone is offering: sleek interface, great usability, everything we use on the phone in a simple package. So surely you have heard of what I think is the greatest feature of this phone: built-in Office.

Personally, I use an Android based phone, and I know plenty of users that have iPhones. I believe one of the biggest draw backs to these phones is having to use either third party Office softwares (which are mostly garbage) or paying up to $15 to use a ported version of Office for those particular phones. With Windows 7 Phone, not only is it a built-in feature, but the way it is integrated makes it far easier to use that any other Office version for the phone.

You will initially being on the One Note page, which is perfect for taking short notes, copying and pasting sections from a web page you need, or even adding voice notes. To-Do lists, travel notes, bills, everything done from one software. Of course, you also have the ability to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Especially great for business users.

The best part is yet to come, you can create a free account with Microsoft’s SkyDrive, which is a cloud service that automatically uploads any documents you save to the internet, making them readily available for your home computer, work computer, or even other users you authorize to use your files. You can even set permissions so users you allow to view your files can edit files, or just read without being to edit files. If you have ever used Google Docs online, you will find all of this very familiar, except that you can use the very powerful Office softwares like Word and Excel rather than watered down online softwares.

Tags: 7, Office, One Note, Phone, SkyDrive, Windows, Windows Phone 7, WP7
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DC Jack Repair

October 1st, 2010

Does your laptop have a hard time holding a charge? Do you constantly have to play around with the power cable to get your laptop to stay on? You may have a bad DC Jack.

The DC Jack, by definition, is an electrical connection that supplies power to the laptop. This is the connection physically inside of your laptop, and often times will start to fail from use. Sometimes this can be caused by the connection itself being broken, or possibly the solder that holds it in place is cracking, even the plastic mold that holds the jack in place can be breaking!

Now the primary issue with DC jacks is that they are typically difficult to fix or replace, which will cause most establishments to want to sell you a whole new motherboard. Never fear though! This is a fixable problem, and most of the time atleast half the price of a new motherboard, and even less than a new computer.

The process requires complete disassembly of the laptop and removing the motherboard (note: not all DC jacks are directly on the motherboard!). After this is done, the old DC jack needs to be desoldered from the board, and a new jack soldered in its place. I typically like to test the jack first with the laptops power cable and a multimeter, and run the same test again when complete to make sure the new jack is making a good connection. If all is well, reassemble the computer and retest.

Tags: DC Jack, laptop, Laptop Power, No Power, Not Charging
Posted in Laptop Repair | No Comments »

ITz Solved Managed Services

April 14th, 2010

San Diego Computer Techs has merged with ITz Fixed Computers and we have formed ITz Solved. Your full service IT support Company. We are now offering managed services for all of our small businesses and I have included a video below to show some of the features of our managed services from the client portal.

Posted in Networking | No Comments »

View Hidden Windows Files and Extensions

September 15th, 2009

Want to know how you can view all of your computers hidden extensions and files/folders? This tutorial from San Diego Computer Techs will show you how you can do it.

Tags: hidden files
Posted in Data Recovery & Backup, Main Blog | No Comments »

Remove Windows Startup Programs