Please guys, can any of you, based in Cebu, fix a laptop and a home pc...??? I don't know what is wrong, it seems matter of memory, overheating, they don't know what they are using, and accordingly cannot explain clearly what the problem is. Only that it doesn't work............ I am definitively not sending another one.............. Unless Alan has got nothing better to do on his way back......... Ideally I could pay you direct by paypal Please it is needed asap.
I think this is typically due to dust in the PC - especially dust affecting operation of any fans inside the PC, or simply a fan that has stopped working for some other reason. A overheated PC will probably shut down to protect itself. The fan may also be making funny noises because it is trying to work faster when clogged up. Always, follow any instructions given by your PC manufacturer for cleaning, otherwise... Disconnect the PC from the mains supply and leave to cool down. Remove the side panels and wipe away any dust that is easily reachable with a dry cloth. For the hard to reach places, use a can of compressed air (the cheaper variety are often flammable so take great care). You will need to spray the heat sink on the processor, the cooling fans and the extractor fan of the power supply and any ventilation holes as a minimum. You may also spray the entire motherboard. You can replace the side panels. While you are at it, you may as well clean the keyboard too - shake it upside down to remove any loose material, then spray with compressed air and shake upside down again. Spray cleaner (suitable for electrical devices) onto a soft dry cloth and wipe the keyboard. If you want to really clean the keyboard you could try removing all the keys before commencing your cleaning, but I suggest taking a photo of the keyboard first so you know where to replace all the keys! The keys can be washed in lukewarm soapy water with a toothbrush, rinsed and left to dry before replacing. Cleaning laptops may be a bit harder because of their compact nature - I don't have experience if cleaning those. Get into the habit of routine cleaning and make sure the PC is used in a well-ventilated place. If it is a laptop, don't site the computer on soft material such as your bed or even your lap as this can block the circulation of air (it has vent holes underneath) Always site it on a flat hard surface. In a climate, such as the Philippines, I guess PCs are more prone to this type of problem; a higher ambient temperature and more dust build up in dry weather which is then consolidated with high-humidity in wet weather.
To be perfectly honest, I haven't got a clue what is wrong with them. And I am not really willing to send money for someone to have a few free lunches on, just on the say-so...... That is why I was asking wether there was anyone, in the expats world, that knew how to sort out the darn things, to whom I could send money in payment for services, directly by paypal.... To be fair, our lot doesn't ask for anything, and are grateful when ever we can spare a few bob, but it sounds to me as if they have been told a few porkies, and if a "kano" is involved in the background, it means that they are made of money... If you know what I mean...
Generally I've paid 500 pesos for a technician to look-see what the problem is. A new power supply for a desktop shouldn't cost more than 500 pesos. Laptops get horrendously expensive to fix and, wherever you are, can cost as much as a new one if it's the motherboard or screen, for example. There are places that refurbish used laptops to sell and it might be worth looking for one.
Dom try googling for 'computer repairs cebu' and the likes and you should get some classified ads back they will have a phone number, try to find as many as possible and then try to assess the quality of their ad, hard I know. As Bob says it should not cost much to get a diagnosis, and he's right about laptop repairs they are expensive, it's not like the UK where you can get parts cheap on ebay or even a spares/repairs laptop that lets you build one good one out of two broken ones. It is hard though to get intelligent hands on the other end of a phone, our current machine that I built six years ago out of parts I brought from the UK (cheaper) has always had a fault where the seating of the RAM was a bit delicate, every so often if the box was moved and flexed the RAM would fail, all I do to fix it is remove the RAM wipe the gold contacts (not really needed) and reseat the RAM in its slots, works every time. Anyway the point of the story is that I had important backups of a lot of my work an that machine and during an argument with Ana she finally ignored my instructions and got a member of the family to try to fix it, what did he do? Reformatted the drive on the one occasion when the machine decided to work. Sadly that is the normal fix for software issues over there, computers are really mostly only an internet gateway they don't understand that the drive contains valuable information. My point is try to get someone that sounds reasonably intelligent speaks good English and appears to understand you properly. There is a very small possibility that I might be there in a couple of weeks if I am I will let you know on here, my plans are a bit fluid at the moment.
