Important business show(s) attended

Recently we had to attend the IPEXPO comptuer exhibition and companies from accross the board such as Intel, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Toshiba we're all there demonstrating their new and improved products to the IT industry.  The event was held at Earls Court London and many guests speakers we're taking part in seminars which largely dealt with Cloud computing.  There was a mini lecture theatre where one of the guest speakers gave a talk on the many different aspects of Cloud computing which is a fairly new technology being introduced into the world of computing today.

Earls Court Exhibition Hall

Theatre where talk on Cloud Computing  was being held

At one point the guest speaker was having a few teething

problems with his  wireless slides being projected             

onto the screen via projector and wireless laptop                 

(Teething problmes on day one)     

Many people turned up for this event, amazingly a new record was set and set targets for the number of people that we're suppose to attend went through roof - Many thousands of people attend this two day event and particular attention was being paid to the semminars on Cloud Computing and how this technology could find it's way into businesses and improve business twofold.  Many business leaders from many fields attended this computer show which was very popular as can been seen from the many people that attended the show.

People discussing how to improve their businesses with other companies

Motorola, who one would normally associate with mobile phones we're also at the IPEXPO exhibition launching their new product range which could vastly improve upon the way current businesses did their business using current mobile phone technology as illustrated in the following picture below.

Motorola stand divided into separate categories

Many more companies that attended this year's IPEXPO delivered some unparalled sofware that was very hard to beat.  Fro example, at the show, a company started to hand out flyers and free demonstration CD's which included software that could archive all your emails (PST files) and then transfer those archived files to appropriate mdeida such as CD/DVD, floppy disk (still in use today) tape drive, flash drive, SD memory cards for backup purposes only.  Using this sort of software allows users to back up all thier e-mails and transfer them safely to appropriate back up media instead of doing it the long way around using Outlook/Outlook Express.  This can be of great benefit should you accidentally delete your e-mails or your email contact list has become so corrupted that emails that we're once in your e-mail folder cannot be read anymore.  Backing up emails in (especially PST files which includes contact lists, phone numbers, addresses, etc) is quite a long winded process since you have to export email files to an appropriate format and then burn these files to disk.  What the email archival progam does is back-up these files and then immediately allow you to transfer these files without having to go through a long winded processes of converting/exporting PSt files to CSV and then transferring CSV files to appropriate storage media.

 A birdseye view from the upper gallery of Earl's Court   

The many thousands who attended we're all drawn to the many different stands accross the entire perimeter of Earls Court with the main attraction being  The Cloud Computing mini theatre.  On the day people got to see the latest advances in Wi-Fi software technology such as  Wi-Fi archival software (a latest development in software stnad)  stand hat can been seen in the picture above.

A new software compnay called Juniper came out with their newest product which revolutionised the way we use networks.  The new hardware had the capability of improving on other methods used when deploying sofware on much older networks.  A photo of this company is pictured below.

The New Network from Juniper

Photo of an old networking system

         NewStar Sofware discussing how to best improve business all round

A sofware company that  may be new to many of you but have been around since the 1980's is NewStar Sofware.  NewStar we're the founder makers of NewWord which was a MS-DOS program( word processor based) which was compatible with well known word processing package called Wordstar.  NewWord came on 5 1/4 " disk and was a major competitor to Wordstar.  The company has risen to new heights since the 1980's and as you can see from the photograph above, people we're having general discussions on the best way to improve their business practice with NewStar's new product range.

SONY VAIO LAPTOP - OVERHEATING PROBLEMS

Overheating problems arise in all laptops whether they be from Dell, Sony, HP, Toshiba, Esystems, etc.  Most laptops out on the market are fitted with one fan and one Heatsink but a lot of the time these fans are not capable of keeping an entire laptop computer cool and result in laptops swtiching off after they've been turned on after only a few seconds.  We went on a callout to findout what was wrong with the customer's laptop. The client told us that when the laptop was switched on, the Laptop would come on with the hard drive lights, DVD rom lights and other light indicatiors coming on indiating that power was going to the machine.  We then first thought that the ribbon conncting cable had come loose from the back of the screen so we took the screen out of the laptop to verify this.  The cable had not come loose so we put the screen back into the laptop and then thought the GPU may be playing up and overheating so we stripped the laptop down (we didn't take out the motherboard at this stage).  We then switched the laptop on and then found that that a lot of heat was coming out of the laptop.  We then switched the laptop off, uplugged the power cord and then continued to strip down the laptop.  We preceeded to take off the bottom of the case which then revealed the motherboard.  We then took out all the screws from the motherboard, tookout the heatsink, leaving only the fan connected to the lower base of the laptop.  We carefully lifted out the motherboard from the bottom base of the case and then placed this on a non-metallic, non-conductive surfce.  As we had previously done this overheating job before, we then attempted to remove the old thermal compound from the GPU and CPU using a thermal removal solution that's used to remove silver thermal compound. With the remnants of the old silver compound removed we then replaced the old thermal silver compound with new silver thermal compound and then heated the GPU for 30 seconds.  After replacing the heatsink over GPU and CPU we then put back the mohterboard into the bottom base of the laptop but putting the screws back in and screwing the mothrboard back onto the case.  We then switched the laptop on and everything seemed to work.  The laptop was then switched off and put back together again.  As soon as everyhing had been put back we switched the laptop on for one final time and this resulted in Windows booting up, so again we actually fixed this machine.  The following photos will illustrate the work that we carried out for the client.

                         Client's laptop above that had overheating problems

                    

UNOPENED SONY LAPTOP

  

Data recovery - customer call out

A client called us out becasue she had lost valuable data and files such as photo, word processed file, video files and animination files.  The client had a Dell GX260 computer base which comprised of a floppy drive, 120 gigabyte, DVD Rewriter.  The hard drive had Windows 7 on it, 6 USB ports and the usual odds and ends normally associated with a computer base.  We attempted to recover all our client's files with Data Recovery Software called Recover My Files.  To use this software, we had to plug into an available USB port on the computer base, our USB pen drive that had this software on it.  We then proceeded to find the clien'ts files as the following video will show.

With many different data recovery programs available on the market, we found Recovery My Files extremely easy and straight forward to use and the user interface is not as cumbersome as many people would have you think.  Recovery My Files gave us several options to find files (i.e. Quick file search, Complete file search, Unformat hard drive Search and other searches).  We clicked on complete file search becasue we wanted to find all the files that the client told  us to find.  With Recover My Files, you're given an option that allows you to state what sort of file type your looking for (e.g. Jpeg files, Bitmap files, Word files, Excel files, etc).  You can search for over 300 + files types with Recover My Files.  We managed to file 95% of all our client files using Recover My Files. We found and recovered 28 videos on the customer's hard drive and when we clicked on each on, each of these videos worked.   Once the files we're found we then had to save these files to other storage media so we managed to save all the recovered files found to DVD. (i.e. Recover my files then burnt these recovered files to DVD storage media).   The data recovery job took us 6 hours to complete (Data recovery takes a long time when you do it properly using the complete file search).  We had to look for our customer's photos separately since choosing to look for the photo's along with other files at the same time may have led to a lot of these files not being found.  After recovering our client's files, our client seemed pleased with the results but was wondering why the data recovery process took so long.  We explained to the customer that becasue his machine had a very old processor in, the prcessor intensive task of locating and recovring files only took so long becasue of the speed and amount of memory inside the computer.  The comptuer had 1GB of ram and was struggling to cope due to lack of system resources.  The cusomter asked us if there was any way around this problem so we suggested he buy a complete new motherboard with 2 GB of memory and then call us back when he wanted the new board fitted into the case.  Within a few weeks of us completing the data recovery of the client's hard drive, the client then called us back to install a new motherboard with CPU (Dual Core motherboard with CPU).

RECOVERING DATA FROM A HARD DRIVE THAT CRASHED

A client called us out becasue the hard drive on her computer had crashed and everytime she tried to turn her computer on, after 10 seconds the computer would switch off stating because of an electrical fault (e.g. power surge) the computer would shut down so as to save files from damage on the comptuer's hard drive.  The client tried in vain to start her computer herself but had no luck so she called us.  We opened up her Packard Bell PC and saw that she had a Sata hard drive (160 GB in capacity) so lucily, on hand we had another hard drive in our  PC repair toolkit box that had Windows XP on (our hard drive was also sata 320GB) so we took out the client's hard drive from her machine and inserted our hard drive into her computer.  On switching on our client's computer, the Packard Bell machine booted into Windows XP.  We then attached a Sata docking station (i.e. a device which allows you to attach internal sata hard drives to it's unit in order for a working computer to read the information/data contained on the crashed hard drive)via USB  as illustrated below.

                                           Sata Hard Drive Docking Station

The hard drive docking station has many uses and is extremely to use, just insert the base end of the hard drive (i.e. where sata connector is) and gently push down until it snaps into place. One of the major advantages that this type of hard drive docking station has is it's ability to transfer data/files/information from one hard drive to another or other type of storage media.  It's also possible to back up the whole hard drive using back up software such as Norton's Ghost which is illustrated in the following video.

Laptop Repair - HP

Make of Laptop: HP                                                               
Model: DV 6000                   
                               
                            Fault: When laptop is turned on moments later it switches inself off

                                                                
Description of Problem

We had a call out whereby a client's laptop when turned on would turn itself off again whever a key was pressed (seconds after being turned on).  This problem occured 5 seconds after it had been switched on.  Having run into simillar problems before, we made sure to run a few diagnostic tests on the laptop to findout what was causing this intimitent problem whereby each time the laptop was switched on, it would immediately swtich off again without any user response.  One of oru first diaognostic tests that we ran tested the laptop's memory.  We took the cover off from the memory compartment becasue we thought that the memory was making the laptop react the way it was reacting (i.e. switching itself off seconds after being switched on).  After taking out the memory from the laptop, we switched the laptop on and waited for the boot screen to appear.  After a few seconds, we tried entering the bios (user response) just to see if the laptop would go into the bios or would switch itself off.  To enter the bios we had to press F2 so we pressed F2 and the laptop switched itself off.  We thought that this seems a bit odd becasue we had alrady dealt with another laptop with a simillar problem and when we took out the memory and put the memory back into the laptop, that laptop begain working and started booting into Windows XP.  We then thought that it may be the hard drive that was causing problems so we took the hard drive out of the laptop and again switched on the laptop.  Taking out the hard drive had no affect when we turned on the laptop for the third time.

At this stage we we're a bit puzzled at what was causing this fault.  We then thought it may be the screen inverter that may be cuasing the problem so we disconnected the screen. (i.e. with a very think flat head precision screwdriver we gently inserted this into the sides of the screen bezel all away round the frame of the screen, gently guiding the screwddriver down the groves of the screen bezel.  Once the fram was removed from the screen, we then disconnected the screen inverter that had been connected to the screen.  After taking this out, we then switched the laptop back on.  The laptop again, after only a few seconds of being switched on, swtiched itself off.  We then decided to disconnect the screen and take teh screen out of the frame.  After taking the screen out, we then switched the machine on again, still we we're having problems - So far we had eliminated the memory giving problmes, the screen inverter giving problems, the hard drive giving problems and the inverter giving problems and eliminating these which may have given arise to the laptop switching itslef off as soon as it was turned on.  We didn't reconnect the screen becasue we still wanted to condutct further investiagations as to why the laptop was switching itself off intimitently so we put the screen to one side, in a safe place so it wouldn't get scratched or damaged accidentally.  After removing the laptop screen and moving it to one side we then turned our attentions to the laptop's motherboard.  We had come to the conclusion that maybe a capacitor or transitor had become burnt/damaged so we got ready to take out the motherboard from the laptop.  In order for us to gain access to the laptop's motherboard, we ahd to remove the keyboard, the keyboard cable and the outer case of the laptop.                                                      

We found removing the outer casing of the laptop a bit tricky becasue it was attached to the motherboard. 



So far what we actually did was use the process of elimination to findout why the laptop had been behaving in the way that it was (i.e. finding out why the laptop was faulty using the process of elimination to draw our own conclusions).  After removing outer casing, keyboard, hard drive, DVD writer and other internal components, we then took out the motherboard to check the capacitors and transitors, looking for signs of burning.

 

Other jobs dealt with continued.......

 Problem no.5

Computer has a Virus/Spyware problem (Vista 2010 Virus/Rogue Toolkit)

We went on a call out job to Kingston, the client had a rouge toolkit that downloaded itself from the internet.  The customer couldn't use the computer properly, every time the client wanted to use a computer application such as Word or Excel a dialog window would appear asking for a file association.  We made sure to ask the client if he had backed up all his files on his hard drive and the client told us he had.  We told the client that there we're three possible ways out of the rouge toolkit problem but we wouldn't use the last solution unless we absolutely had to because the last solution would involve editing the registry and if that didn't work that would lead to us performing a Packard Bell product recovery using the recovery partition of the hard drive.  So as not to waste time and to get rid of the problem, because the last solution would have led to us performing a product recovery of the clients hard drive, instead of using the other solution that we had, we performed the product of the Packard Bell machine and this resolved the problem.  After the client's computer had been fully restored back to it's original factory settings, we then installed a virus program (PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Anti-Virus which has 10 different defense mechanisms in it's armoury and removes all traces of Viruses;/Spyware/Malware so they cannot come back.   It's vital that any Anti-Virus program that's used is regularly updated so your Anti-virus program can defend your PC from potential threats on the Internet.  PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Anti-Virus (Paid up version) good at what it does and can compete with the big boys e.g. Norton Antivirus, AVG Antivirus.  As soon as the job was finished (job took an hour and a half to complete) customer was left very happy and recommended us to his friend who wanted the same level of Anti-Virus protection.

PC Tools is on par with Norton Antivirus and does offer very high levels of protection from Spyware and other Computer Viruses found on the Internet and one of the major differences between Norton Antiviurs and PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Antivirus is that PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Antivirus is less hungry - This does not mean it's less powerful, it's on par with Norton Anti-Virus with it's level of protection it offers.
http://anti-spyware-review.toptenreviews.com/spyware-doctor-review.html

Problem no. 6

Power supply not working properly, when it was switched on smoke started  coming out of it

A customer called us and told us that every time he turned on his computer smoke would keep coming out of the power supply unit.  We told the customer how much it would cost to install a new power supply (just to be on the safe side as it would appear that the inside of the power supply was heavily laden with dust).  The following day we went to the customer's house in Worcester Park whereupon the customer came with us to PC World bought the power supply we told him to buy, went back to his house and fitted the power supply.  Now the chassis was a very hard chassis to open, we had to slide the lid off the top of the case and then take out of CD rom drive so we could remove the power supply and insert a new one.  After we inserted the power supply and re-installed the CD rom drive, the customer then said he wanted a back up to be made of all the data on his machine so we installed Norton's Ghost for him (original paid up version) and backed up his whole hard drive.  The customer then asked us to increase the speed of his hard drive so we installed Norton Utilities 14 (original paid up version) and then selected to defragment the client's hard drive.  The defragmentation process took only an hour and a half to complete.  If we had used Windows defragmentaiton without Norton's we would have been at the customer's house all day.  If you use use Windows degragmentaiton without a good Windows optimiser, it will take you literally hours and hours to defragment a hard drive.  After we had finished all computer related tasks, the customer looked very happy and said he would recommend us to other people.

OTHER COMPUTER PROBLEMS DEALT WITH

 Dell Laptop

Tried to install Windows 7 but the Windows 7 NTLDR (short for New Technology Loader) wouldn't load.

POSSIBLE REASONS FOR NTLDR NOT LOADING.......

Although is states that Windows 7 is only upgradeable through Windows Vista and cannot be upgraded from Windows XP, Windows 7 still didn't boot up after the Original OEM version of Windows 7 on DVD  had been inserted into the DVD re-writer of the Dell Laptop and installation was aborted.  Widows Vista Basic was on the Laptop and this caused the DVD installation of Windows 7 to abort with an error message appearing on screen stating that the NTLDR Loader wouldn't load.  We found a simple solution to the problem and that was to boot MS-Dos 6.22 from an external floppy disk drive, format the hard drive completely inside MS-Dos and then insert the Original OEM DVD Windows 7 disk and wait for Windows 7 to install.  To format the Hard drive in MS-Dos, as soon as MS-Dos loaded, from the floppy disk that contained MS-Dos we typed in Fdisk (which is a hard drive preparation program which prepares the hard drive to be formatted).  On clicking Fdisk we we're given several options to prepare the hard drive such as Create a primary partition, create an extended dos partition, delete a logical drive or delete a non-dos partition.  In this instance we chose delete non-dos partition.  After deleting the non-dos partition we returned to the main menu and selected the option to make the partition active.  As soon as the hard drive became active, we rebooted MS-Dos and waited again for MS-Dos to load.  After tMs Dos loaded again we then typed in format to format the hard drive.  Now MS-Dos only allowed us to format 2GB of the actual hard drive but this was sufficient to clear the problem of the NTLoader not loading.  On formatting the 2GB of the 160GB hard drive we then inserted the OEM original Windows 7 DVD and rebooted from the DVD drive.  On re-booting from the DVD that contained the OEM original Windows 7 DVD, Windows 7 started to install itself.  Before installing though, Windows 7 gave us the usual options of formatting the hard drive in either Fat, Fat 32, or NTFS so we chose to format the hard drive in NTFS. On re-formatting the hard drive again, Windows 7, after re-formating the hard drive started to extract the necessary files from the DVD and then started installing them.  After the complete installation of Windows 7, we took out the the Original 7 OEM DVD from the DVD drive of the Dell laptop and then re-booted from the hard drive and as if by magic, when the laptop booted up, instead of the NTLDR message appear stating that the NTLDR could not be loaded, Windows 7 appeared on screen.  When we checked the volume on the hard drive it showed a health 140 GB or more of free hard disk space so thank goodness for MS-Dos, it still has it's uses.

Problem no.2

The owner of a Dell Desktop (Optiplex GX260) wanted to get rid of Windows 2000 and wanted Windows XP Professional installed on it., the hard drive was very small (only 20GB).  We tried installing Windows home (streamlined version without any drivers but this didn't work properly because the streamlined version didn't load any basic VGA driver and we couldn't see what we we're doing because of it.  Installed Windows Professional from an orginal OEM CD and this gave us various options (ie. install upgrade to Windows Professional or install the Full version).  We installed the upgraded version of Windows Professional but this had no affect at all.  After installing the upgrade version, upon re-booting, Windows XP Home booted up.  I the end what we had to do was boot up from MS-Dos 6.22, deleted the non-dos partition residing on the computer's hard drive, made the partition on the hard drive active and then attempted to install Windows Professional again, this time though making sure to make a full clean installation which deleted the previous installation of Windows XP Home.  We made sure to choose  Ful installaton l not upgrade when installing Windows Professional.  On performing this procedure we we created a new partition on the hard drive  after Windows XP professional had booted up (which included the basic VGA driver so we could see what we we're doing) we then went to the dell website and downloaded all the drivers for the Dell Optiplex GX260.  The drivers we're downloaded using the Dell driver manager that you can download from the Dell support site.  After the drivers had been downloaded we had to open each driver (i.e. each driver came as an executable file, e.g. exe file) and had to be opened.  After opening the driver files and rebooting the computer, the Dell Optiplex GX260 came on with vibrant colours being produced from the ATI Radeon display card. To make sure that there we're no Computer Viruses, we ran Malwarebytes and PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Antivirus.  There we're no signs of any malicious pieces of code - The client was very pleased with the work that we carried out for him.
 Problem no.3

Acer Aspire 335 Notebook won't install Windows Vista 

A customer called us and asked us if we could  install Windows XP on her machine.  We told the customer we could but she needed to purchase an OEM Original CD that had Windows XP on it.  The customer wanted XP Home so we went around to the customer's house and she gave us the money to purchase the OEM CD for her.  The next day we went round with the paid for CD that had Windows XP on it.  We gave the customer her the receipt of the Software that we purchased for her on her behalf.  We then started to install Windows XP so we switched on the customer's laptop and inserted the Windows XP Home original OEM CD.  After performing a check  to see if there we're any previous versions of Windows on the hard drive, Windows came up with an error message stating that a newer version of Windows (Namely Windows Vista Basic) was on the hard drive and thus couldn't go any further.  With this in mind what we had to do was boot up MS-Dos 6.22 from an external floppy disk drive, delete the partition on the hard drive and then format the hard drive.  After performing these tasks we then inserted the Windows XP original OEM CD into the DVD re-writer of the Acer Aspire 335 Notebook computer and then re-booted the computer.  On re-booting, the computer went instantly into the install mode of Windows XP Home (i.e by reading the CD the  computer went into Windows XP install mode).  After the files had been extracted, before installation, we we're asked if we wanted to delete the partition and we clicked on yes.  We we're then asked what system file format we wanted to format the hard drive in (i.e. Fat, Fat 32 or NTFS).  We chose NTFS and waited for the hard drive to be re-formatted by Windows.  After formatting the hard drive, Windows XP Home began installing itself.  During the installation (that includes all installations of various versions of Windows) we we're asked to type in the product key which can usually be found inside the packaging of the Windows original OEM CD's.  After the product code had been typed in, Windows then installed all the files and within half an hour to 45 minutes the installation of Windows XP had been installed.  We had to go to the Acer website to download all the Acer drivers for the Acer Aspire 335 Notebook computer and these drivers consisted of Wi-Fi- drivers, graphics drivers, Lan drivers, chipset drivers, USB drivers, soundcard drivers - Without these drivers the laptop wouldn't be able to function properly.  Once the drivers had been downloaded and installed, the Acer laptop when re-booted, booted up in Windows XP Home and all devices that we're connected to the Notebook started to work.  The customer was happy and said he would recommend us again.

Instead of downloading drivers one by one you can infact purchase a software product that will download all the drivers for you and this product is called DRIVER GENIUS and can be obtained either by going online or from going into a video games shop called GAME and purchasing it from there.   To be on the safe side though to make sure that you get the correct up- to-date software drivers for computer, you should always go to the manufacturers website (i.e. go to the website of the company that made your desktop or laptop computer).

Problem no. 4

Computer won't BOOT - UP, command or filename not recorgnised


We went on a house call to a client's house whereby she was using a PC that had been built for her (i.e. not a branded machine) and the machine and the machine had no recovery partition on the hard drive.  When the client tried turning on her machine, an error message appeared stating 'UNRECORGNISED COMMAND OR FILENAME'.  The client had a Windows rescue CD but when we put this into the DVD drive of the computer and booted up from this drive, the CD wasn't being read by DVD unit.  After several attempts we told the customer she would have to purchase an original OEM Windows XP Home CD to repair the file damage.  The customer asked us how much this would cost so we told her and bought the CD ourselves and then gave the customer the CD and the recepit.  We then went back the following day, inserted the original OEM Windows XP Home CD into the DVD drive of the customer's computer and then waited for Windows XP to be booted up.  On booting up, we we're asked if we wanted to repair Windows XP, install a complete fresh installation of Windows XP so we chose the to repair the file damaged file.  On repairing the damaged file we then re-booted the customer's PC and hey presto, the customer's PC started working again.  The customer was thus elated with the work that we carried out for her and we gave her additional information and told her if she had any problems she should call us on our 24 hour hotline - 07904 836 667.
 


 

 

PC repair call out services in South London and Surrey including Merton, Mitcham, Kingston and Wandsworth

Computer repair call out services in South London and Surrey - Call us now on 07904836667

There are many computer repair shops around Mitcham and indeed Merton, all with some form of reputable reputation  who's knowledge is very limited though to what they can do.  There are big organizations out there that claim their computer technicians know what they are talking about and will come out and look at your computer and even fix it on site.  These large computer organizations often employ computer technicians who go round to customer's houses, have a look at the customer's computer and then make things worse by trying to fix the  problems on site without any prior knowledge about the problem affecting the client's computer.  Has anyone heard of a computer problem called Code Purple?  Well this problem is quite common.  A Code Purple error with any branded PC that has the misfortune of being opened up by inexperienced computer technicians who have installed a new piece of internal hardware using third party software and not updating Windows (in particular Windows Vista).  The reason for this error to occur is that computer manufactures have  made arrangements  with Microsoft so if any hardware that's has not been made by a particular manufacture of a PC is installed and it hasn't been updated in Windows and has been updated using third party software, whenever a PC is switched on a Code Purple error will result rendering the PC useless (i.e. locking the hard drive so Windows won't boot up.  Now you would think that to resolve this problem you just press the F11 or F12  key on your computer and then your computer will recovery itself and reset itself to it's original factory settings, but this doesn't work because of the type of error Windows and the computer manufacturers motherboard reports (i.e. Code Purple).  The Code Purple error corrupts the recovery hard drive partition of the branded computer system and this is something that many computer technicians working for reputable computer company's do not realize.  These so called technicians fail to realize time after time after time that if the piece of internal hardware that's been installed hasn't been updated through Windows (such as Windows Vista) then a Code Purple error will occur which will prevent Windows Vista from booting up.  Computer technicians working for reputable companies that sell computers need to make sure that the motherboard and the operating system know of the changes that have been made and failing to ensure that both motherboard and operating system have been updated with the changes can have serious consequences such as a Code Purple error appearing each time the computer is switched on.  A typical Code Purple Message would be Windows Vista has not been configured properly and the computer will be shut down to save valuable data.   Now, in a now-branded machine or a self-built computer, the Code Purple error should not appear as this only occurs on branded computers.  Many computer technicians from one particular organization (who shall be nameless due to legal reasons) simply make life impossible for the customer once they've called round since they are not equipped with the correct knowledge to solve computer problems.  At Jaiswebinternetcomms however, we've had to deal with this problem before and this is how we dealt with the Code Purple Error problem on a customer's computer.

As the problem was a Code Purple Error, performing the following tasks solved the problem.   The computer that we had problems with was an HP 3340UK Desktop PC running Windows Vista.  Because of the nature of the problem, the recovery partition on drive D couldn't be accessed no matter how many times we tried using the recovery program on the Hard drive's recovery partition, the recovery program just wouldn't work.  The recovery partition partition had become become corrupted and ever time we tired to run the recovery partition program, on restarting Windows Vista, a Code Purple Error resulted.    There was one solution available to us and that was to install Windows Vista using an original retail edition of Windows Vista.  We told the customer the only way to re-install Windows Vista was to buy an original Windows Vista DVD, install Windows Vista, re-install the drivers and re-install other software on the computer's hard drive.  We told the customer that if she had any problems after purchasing the Windows Vista DVD that she must call us back.  A week later the customer call us back and asked us if we could call round and install Windows Vista, the drivers for the computer and all the original software that she had on CD/DVD.  We went back to the customer's hosue and got straight to work.  We switched on the computer and went into the computer's bios.  We then changed the boot up options so the computer would boot up from the DVD drive.  Before pressing F10 and saving the changes to the computer's Bios, we pressed the DVD button to open the DVD drive door, inserted the Original Windows DVD into the DVD drive, closed the drive door and then pressed F10 to save the Bios settings.  After the Bios settings had been saved and we came out of the Bios, the computer restarted and booted from the DVD drive.  On booting up we we're asked if we wanted to install a clean installation of Windows Vista or repair the current installation so we clicked on clean installation.  On clicking on the clean Windows installation option we we're asked which file format we wanted to format the hard drive in (i.e. Fat 16, Fat 32, or NT File System) so we clicked NT File System and the hard drive then formatted to the correct file system.  As this was a full format this deleted everything on the hard drive (including the failed and version of Windows Vista on the client's hard drive e.g. drive C).  After the hard drive had been formatted, Windows Vista began installing itself from the DVD inside the computer's DVD drive.  The drivers that had been on the customer's PC before had been deleted so after installation of Windows Vista we had to download the drivers from the Hewlett Packard website.  Downloading the drivers from HP's website gave us back the functionality of the PC.  The client's PC got back internet connectivity due to the LAN driver being downloaded from HP's website and without this driver the PC wouldn't have been able to use the internet although saying that there was another solution (i.e. to use a mobile broadband dongle) but we didn't do that and so proper internet connectivity was regained.  After all the driver's had been downloaded (i.e. the sound card driver, the graphics card driver, the chip set driver, etc) the computer, when switched on worked like a complete dream with bright vibrant colors being achieved.  The client had other files on her PC such as music files, photos, word processed files and we asked the client if she wanted these documents back on her PC and she said yes,  so we got to the task of retrieving her photos with data recovery software such as Recovery My Files (which incidentally is a very powerful data recovery program).  Ninety eight percent of our client's missing files we're recovered.  We like to keep our customer's informed every step of the way about what we're doing and how we're going about our jobs solving the customer's computer problems.  We like to get the customer involved in what we're doing and if the customer has any questions we are always on hand to answer any queries.   We like to make our client's feel at ease when we do our jobs that's why we keep them updated and involved as much as we can, thus keeping the customer happy and ensuring good customer relations at all times.