Laptop Repair

Hi

My daughters laptop appears to have picked up a virus. She has tried various methods to clean it but nothing is working so we need to send it to someone who knows what they are doing to get it cleaned.

i had a look in the Town Crier and there is a few adverts for people who can do this but i have no idea if they are any good or not.

As i am a complete dunce when it comes to computers can anyone reccomend someone who can clean and repair the said laptop and not charge me the earth for doing it.

Thanks

My daughter took her laptop to the PC Clinic in Clerk Street, Loanhead, and they sorted everything out for her and seemed pretty reasonable as far as the charge went.

A couple of people I know have used Arkle IT to sort out problems with their computers so you could give them a try.

Is it an actual virus on the laptop or one of these fake anti-virus scams which are around at the moment? They pop-up lots of messages telling you that there are hundreds of infections but if you pay £xxx or $xxx then this wonderful program will clean them off - these can be tricky to get rid of since they seem to disable all your existing security programs and can even block Internet access

If she has a backup of any data she needs to keep, she could restore the laptop to the original settings. There should be a disk with the operating system that came with the laptop. Is there an option to press R for recovery when you boot up the laptop? If so make sure the disk is in the drive and follow the instructions.

Don't speak to my son about that fake virus. He has had it twice recently I dread it when he comes down asking to borrow the operating disk, which seems to be the simplest cure. Although he has all his data backed up, it still takes him ages to restore the operating system I suspect the reason he has been infected is due to my other son leaving a couple of ports open to help speed up downloading files (I'm not sure though). However, these have now been closed off just in case.

Hi

The laptop wont let her open anything. She as tried to restore the original disc but it wont let her.

Im in Loanhead tomorrow so will nip into the Pc Clinic and see what they say

Thanks

It sounds as if she has the same problem as my son. In order to restore the system you have to activate the process before Windows has loaded. When booting up look for options which will allow the restore process to take place before Windows has a chance to load up. Once it has loaded, it is too late to do anything It might be necessary to make the BIOS boot from the cd before the C: drive.

By coincidence, this was on the BBC news site today - seems like it is getting to be a major problem

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10088949.stm

How did your daughter get on with her laptop?

Anyway, talking about problems with computers, does this sound familiar to anyone?

So your hard drive just died, and you didn't back it up. I'm so, so
sorry. You can expect to go through the following five stages once you
discover that all of your photos, files and music are gone forever.

Stage One: Denial

"No. No, there's no way. This is probably just a software issue, maybe
if I try rebooting again it'll work. I've only had this hard drive for
two years, there's no way it just died. I'll get all that stuff back.
This silly computer always freaks out but is fine after a reboot. Even
though I've tried rebooting five times and it sounds like a fork is suck
in a garbage disposal in there, it's probably just the CD drive."

Stage Two: Anger

"Are you f*****g kidding me, Western Digital? I've lost everything! I
trusted you, and for what? How does a company that sells such crappy
products stay in business? I will murder the first WD employee I see.
And what the hell is wrong with me that I didn't back this stuff up? I
am the biggest idiot in the world and I want to punch myself in the
goddamned face. I hate myself and don't deserve to be happy."

Stage Three: Bargaining

"OK, so maybe I can download some software and boot this drive as a
secondary drive and try to recover some stuff. I mean, I'll have to go
buy a new hard drive and install it and then figure out how to hook this
one up as a secondary drive, and I'm not sure where my OS discs are, but
hey, I'm a smart guy, I can figure this stuff out, right? Or maybe
professional data recovery services have gotten much, much cheaper
lately. Yeah, I'll bet they're affordable now, they've gotta be."

Stage Four: Depression

"All those photos. I'll never, ever get them back. I'll never see those
faces again. And my essays from college, I was going to share those with
my kids someday. And man, all that music, it's taken me years to collect
all that. Why did I even bother? It's like the last ten years of my life
have just been erased."

Stage Five: Acceptance

"Ah, none of that stuff was that important. Most of it was uploaded to
various sites like Flickr, anyways. At least the really important stuff.
Regathering all that music will be fun, too! And hey, you know what?
Maybe it's good to start fresh every once in a while. And man, hard
drives have gotten a lot cheaper since I last bought one. This is really
just a good way to put things in perspective; none of this stuff was all
that important. Except for those photos. Why the hell didn't I back them
up?"

:-)

And the moral is . . . . . ?

Hi

Took the laptop to Pc Clinic in Loanhead. They have removed ALL the viruses. Cost me £50. I have non idea if ths is good or not but it was convinient for me.

I have no idea how that price compares with what others charge. However, the main thing is that she now has her laptop working again I have not had time to look at my PC since Thursday and I'm starting to get slight withdrawal symtoms, which is kind of sad

I have been helping to replace our kitchen. Trust me when I say that it is not something which should be done without serious thought I am sick of takeaways, no sink/water and simply trying to find what you need to make a cup of coffee was an effort. Not to mention the dust and general mess However, we're getting there and all I need to do is tiling, wallpapering, install a cooker hood and lay a carpet

Admin wrote:

I have no idea how that price compares with what others charge. However, the main thing is that she now has her laptop working again I have not had time to look at my PC since Thursday and I'm starting to get slight withdrawal symtoms, which is kind of sad

I have been helping to replace our kitchen. Trust me when I say that it is not something which should be done without serious thought I am sick of takeaways, no sink/water and simply trying to find what you need to make a cup of coffee was an effort. Not to mention the dust and general mess However, we're getting there and all I need to do is tiling, wallpapering, install a cooker hood and lay a carpet

It is definatly worth it as i dont have to share my laptop now

when you finish your kitchen can you come and do mine please

Sounds reasonable to me - I know when my daughter was having problems with hers, we checked out a couple of other places before going to the one in Loanhead. Both the others wanted £50 just to look at it - and that was before anything had been done to the machine.