Computer Crash

Fixed A Computer Crash

Asus A7V400-MX

Windows XP Home

My Brother in-law ‘Steve’ had a crashed computer he brought to me for fixing.

Symptoms
It would not start up. It would get as for a s the XP screen with the blue ‘scrolly’ then return to the Black and white options page.
It refused to start in Safe mode, or any of the other options.

Suspect.
At a guess, it would either be a virus or a hard drive crash.

Work
I decided to remove the hard drive and inspect it fully.
I connected it to the USB on my computer using an IDE ATA caddy and fired it up.
It was very slow to react and I could hear the drive making some odd noises, making a group of four buzzes at regular intervals.
It eventually showed up on ‘my computer’ as an ‘F ‘ drive in this instance.
I could not open the contents of the drive and when I used a right click and selected ‘properties’, it showed up as empty, 0 bytes used. "Oh dear! Looks terminal", I thought.
I tried running my anti-virus (AVIRA AntVir premium) to check it but the program wouldn’t run and eventually crashed my computer.
Not giving up that easy. I decided to try some data recovery systems.
Being cheap, I wanted a free one, so Sal surfed the web looking for such things.
She came up with "PCInspector" a free download at this site
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/download.htm?language=1
or http://www.pcinspector.de/
In German.
It downloaded and ran perfectly, with Teutonic efficiency, and found there was indeed data on the disk.
I managed to recover some data and stored it on my computer’s hard drive for later use.
It did have a struggle and found some sectors on the disk unreadable.
A bit more fiddling and playing around with the functions of the recovery program found some recoverable folders and saved these as well, on my host computer.
My computer eventually crashed when it got stuck trying to read the drive.
I re-booted my host computer leaving the USB caddy still connected. Then something amazing happened!…
As my computer re-booted and checked the hard drives, it found the errant ‘F’ drive and did a CHKDSK on it, finding all sorts of truncated files and lost links. It did it’s best to correct it.
When it had finished, I went to the ‘My Computer’ and looked at the properties of the ‘F’ drive. It now showed that it had Data and was almost completely full. WOW!
I was going to back up the whole drive (80Gb) using Nero ‘BackitUp’, but it required 9 DVD’s and was going to take ages. So I scrubbed that idea and went for a re-install in the original computer.
Plugged it back in and switched on.
It Worked! The original wallpaper and all the files came up with only a few errors. According to Steve these were errors that ‘normally’ happened. One was due to a wireless card that had no drivers.
Found the drivers on the net and transferred it to his comp using a CD-RW. Got it on-line using our wireless network and did a few updates and cleaning up. All seemed OK.

Conclusions.
I reckoned that the hard drive was and is still, faulty and not to be trusted. It was interesting that the windows system picked up on the drive while it was plugged into my computer. Possibly only because it recognised that it was a bootable drive, with windows XP on it.
I installed a spare 10gig slave drive and upgraded the memory from my spares box, so that vital files could be moved across. It really needs an new main hard drive.
A future project.........................

LCD Monitor Repair

15" LCD Monitor repair

Symptoms
The power light came on but no Brightness at all on the screen.
If you looked closely when the computer was on, you could just make out a dull image. But obviously no good to use like this.

Diagnosis
LCD monitors work differently to the old, glass, cathode ray tubes.
CRT’s emit light from phosphor, just inside the front of the glass tube.
Liquid Crystal Displays have no light of their own and rely on miniature fluorescent tubes arranged inside, behind the flat panel, In the same way that LCD watches have a back light to see them at night.
It appeared that this monitor had lost it’s light source.

Investigation
This monitor came apart by undoing three screws at the back and prising the bezel off from around the screen.
There were no obvious signs of burning on the circuit boards.
The miniature, cold cathode, fluorescent tubes need a high voltage to fire them up (about 1,500v). This is made from the 12 volt supply by a section on the board known as an inverter.
I could see the screened (pink) wires that go from the board and disappear round the edge of the screen. Following them back to the plugs on the board, I tested here for signs of a voltage.
If voltage was there, then it is likely that the tubes have both blown. If there was no voltage, then the tubes are likely to be OK and the inverter is faulty.
No Voltage! Dead! Not a sausage!. So the inverter is faulty.

Research.
I Googled the part number on the inverter/power supply board, to see if I could get a new one.
I got a couple of hits in the USA, but when I searched further, the pictures they showed, looked totally different shapes to the board I had. I couldn’t be sure that it would fit, despite doing the same job. Space is a bit tight behind the flat panel. I couldn’t find any circuit diagrams on the web.
The monitor is some obscure make from China and no one would own up to creating it. So I couldn’t attempt to repair the board. The components are surface mounted and a pig to change anyway, without causing collateral damage to the rest of it.
I found a company that actually makes inverter boards to order, and have several generic ones that will power almost any LCD. I just had to identify how many tubes I have and what size screen.
As there were 2 wires, I guess it only had 2 tubes and it was 15inch size.
I ordered a generic double LCD inverter from http://www.lcdinverter.co.uk/
Who are part of http://www.sparesweb.com/
It cost £14.90, but with post & packing and tax, came to £29.14.
A new cheap monitor would cost £50, but it would be good fun to try and reclaim it and keep it from the rubbish heap for another few years.

Picture 3. The Old board.

Installation.
No wiring diagrams came with the board, but I got the general idea from their web site. The new board requires 12volts and has a ready made socket on the board to take a moulded plug. The outputs to the tubes fitted the plugs already on the wires, so no problem there. As I didn’t have a plug for the power supply I just soldered the wires on the pins of the socket to the main board, where I found 12volts coming in from the separate power supply. Pin 1 on the LCD board is 12v+ and pins 4&5 is the ground.
As a precaution, I removed some of the components from the board of the old inverter. Just in case it caused excessive drain or decided at a later date to fire up.
There was no where convenient to screw the new board down behind the screen, so I used self adhesive ‘Velcro’. Mostly because it would insulate it from the metal of the screen and also because I hadn’t got any low profile ‘stand offs’ in my spares box.
Wired up and switched on………………….NOTHING.
Hummmm…what’s wrong. Checked the output from the new board. Dead. 12 volts going in OK.
Checked back at the site and discovered that there is an On/Off pin on the board and it needs 5volts before it will fire up.
There is also a pin for changing the brightness, but as this requires detailed knowledge of the original circuit it can be left off and the tubes will remain at full brightness.

Probed around the board to find 5volts. Found one, but it was on all the time that the power supply is connected. I connected it to pin 3 on the inverter and … IT WORKS. I got the tubes to light and the screen showed the message that there was no input from the computer.

Picture 4. New board on the left

with wires attached.

Not Satisfied
For it to be really useful, I wanted the tubes to power down with the on/off button on the front panel and also to go into standby properly and save power by turning the tubes off.
I had to find a voltage that comes on initially and then goes off when no input is detected.
I probed around with my meter all over the old inverter board but could find no signs of life. Could this be the original fault?
I eventually found, on a plug that links the old inverter board to the video board, a line that had 3.5volts on switch on, returning to 0 after going into standby.
I tried that, and IT WORKS! Brilliant.

Re assembly
After putting the casing all back together and switching on..NOTHING.
The light on the separate power supply was out. Removed the power plug from the monitor and it came back on. Uh Ohh! A short.
Disassembled the screen again and checked all the wiring. All OK.
Connected it to my laptop and switched on with it apart. Working again!
Put it back together with it working.
I was just clipping the bezel back on when I heard fizzling and a funny smell…. OOOpps!
Pulled the plug and disassembled again.
This monitor actually has little speakers in it and one of them was touching the high voltage output from the inverter, as shown by a bit of blackening on one of the pins.
Luckily the inverter board is ‘Velcro’d’ in place. I detached it and moved it further up and away from the loudspeaker attached to the back shell, adding extra insulation to make sure the underside of the inverter is away from the metal back plane.
Reassembled and thoroughly tested in all modes. Brilliant! Job done.

Installing a new Hard drive

How to install a new hard drive.
Sony Vaio with Windows XP Media edition and Sony back up.

Mission.

To upgrade the hard drive from a 100GB to 250GB without loosing any data, keeping the operating system and back up system intact.

Perceived problems.

Due to it being a laptop project, there is no way to connect two hard drives in parallel. The hard drive is also SATA, so no ribbon cables.
The cloning of the drive would have to be via USB.
Need cloning software (preferably free).

Things to buy before starting.

Toshiba 250Gig SATA drive from http://www.aria.co.uk/
SATA docking station with USB from http://www.maplin.co.uk/

Scan the Web

To find free software for cloning.
As part of the search, found free back up software in the form of DriveImage XML from ‘Runtime’ and boot disc software BartPE, from Bart Lagerweij.
Found the ideal program in ‘PC Disk Clone’ from ‘PC Disk Tools’ http://www.pcdisktools.com/
in Australia. They do several versions for sale and a free one. The free one is fully functional but SLOW.
Downloaded the free version and ran it on the Sony.

The program creates a boot disk in order to copy the hard drive. A nice logo of a sheep. No doubt reference to ‘Dolly’ the cloned sheep.
Follow the on screen instructions and put a blank CD in the drive. After a few seconds after clicking on the ‘Burn a CD’ and the disk logo button, a disk was created.

Start.

Set up the computer where it can’t be disturbed for a few hours.
Set up the caddy with the brand new, unformatted SATA drive in it, plugged in, switched on and connected the USB.
Put the disk just created, into the drive and re-start the computer. No need to set the BIOS to pick up the CD ROM drive as it is already set to look there first, if there is a bootable disk in the drive.
When it sets up it looks for the external drive. It said that, if it can’t find the USB just press any key.
This I did. I did try unplugging and reconnecting the USB but no visible acknowledgement on the screen, so I pressed any key.
Not to worry, the next screen showed the existence of the new drive on the USB.
You select the ‘source’ drive from the table, which was at the top of the list.
It showed the partitions on that drive including the hidden one where Sony had stored the recovery data.
Go to ‘next’, then select the Destination drive.
The drive was shown as ‘removable’. Then click next.
The cloning then started and showed 0% for several minutes.
It was SLOW. It took 10 hours!, to copy 100Gb to the new drive. But who cares, it was free and I don’t expect to do this on a regular basis.

Replace the drive.

Once finished and the computer was shut down, it was time to swap the drives.
On the VAIO the hard drive is accessed from under the computer. Remove 2 screws and then the drive slides out from the front. It has to be separated from the mounting plate by 4 screws.
Re-attach the new drive to the mounting plate plug it back in and replace the 2 screws diagonally opposite on the rectangular location.
Switch on. Hey Presto! The computer fired up as if nothing had happened to it. All the desk top and programs exactly in place.
So perfect was the copy that we had exactly the same capacity as before. What has happened to the extra size on the drive?!…..

Partitions.

Using Windows, I went to the Computer management. Found in ‘Control Panel’ then ‘Administrative Tools’ then ‘Computer Management’. Select the ‘Disk Management’ under the ‘Storage’ tree. And there it is!.
The Partitions are shown in a table, all as it should be. The hidden drive, the ‘C’ drive, the ‘D’ drive and there at the end, in black, ‘UNALLOCATED’ all 137Gb of it!
How to use it?

A bit of research on the net, all refers to using proprietary software such as ‘Partition Magic’, all at a price. Ok, if you are doing this as a living, but as a one off I want it for free!
I found a program called ‘Cute Partition Manager’ at http://www.cutepm.com/
I downloaded it and ran it. It makes a bootable disk so that it can handle messing with the hard drive without falling over itself.
It failed to make the boot disk properly so I selected it to make an ‘*.ISO" file, which it put in my root drive under CPM. I then burnt this to a CD using ‘Nero’.
The disk booted OK and gave a table of the partitions. I couldn’t work out how to expand the ‘C’ drive to make use of the unallocated area, at least not without loosing all the data it had taken me 10hours to put on there!
More research on their site on the web revealed that it couldn’t do it. It couldn’t do much more than the windows system would do anyway and to Re-partition would loose the data.

Back to the drawing board.

Research by Googling ‘Free partition software’ found a company called ‘Easeus’ at http://www.partition-tool.com/ or http://www.easeus.com/
Navigate to the FREE Partition Manager, Home Edition.
It downloaded and installed itself on the computer.
When you run it, it shows the partitions and you can simply drag with the mouse, using grab handles on the graphics. Brilliant!
I had to do it in several stages as the unallocated partition was at the end, after the ‘D’ drive.
I wanted a big ‘C’ drive and not so big ‘D’ drive.
So I first made the ‘D’ Huge, dragging the end of the partition right to the end of the line, using up all the unallocated space.
Then I made it small again by dragging the beginning away from the end of the ‘C’ drive.
I then expanded the ‘C’ drive to take up the slack. Almost as easy as saying it!
Then click on the ‘apply’ button. Then computer then shuts down and reboots.
Very clever that it doesn’t need an external drive like a floppy or CD. (It must retain the program in memory and run from there).
Anyway it re-booted and shows a display on how it’s getting on. It did it in three stages and took little more than 10 minutes.
It then re-booted and everything was OK. After a second re-boot to acknowledge what it saw as a new hard drive, a look in ‘My Computer’ shows a nice big ‘C’ drive and ‘D’ drive.
All is well.