I was recently asked via email about how I handle stock as a self employed computer technician. You want be able to carry enough stock to be able to do your job, but you don’t want to be holding onto too much because their value can decline so quickly. Here’s what I do:
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In this article, I am going to show you an easy way to access a Windows user account without knowing the original password. First of all, I know there many other ways to do this such as using a live CD like Ophcrack or something like Knoppix to access the Windows password file etc… but I find this way is the easiest, most reliable and gives the most options.
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The other day I had a computer come in that appeared to have a dead motherboard. I took out their CPU and RAM and put it in my test PC. The whole system powered up and got into Windows XP with no problems so it seemed the RAM and CPU were fine. However, I was unsure whether their power supply was faulty and I didnt want to plug the PSU into my good test motherboard in case it damaged it. So I went to get my trusty multimeter to test the power supply and I couldnt find it anywhere; it seems I had lost it.

So, I bought a Power Supply Tester specifically designed to test computer power supplies and I am very happy with it. Heres why:
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When you go onsite to fix a computer, you should obviously fix the problem that you were sent there to do but I am sure you could always find something else to do such as updating their antivirus, patch their Windows, update applications, empty temporary folders and clean out dusty computers. This all takes extra time that the client may not want to pay for and can be potentially risky. So how far should you go? Read on.
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As a computer technician, I have seen some pretty interesting computer problems. The majority of problems I encounter in the home market are adware, spyware or connectivity problems and the occasional hardware problem.
The hardware problems are usually caused by simple manufacturer fault (as in, it was going to fail at one point anyway) or a power surge. However, occasionally I find a computer that was killed by pet hair, dust or cigarette smoke. These three eventually find their way into the computers fans or heatsinks causing the computer to overheat and die.

Over the years I have come across a few bad cases of this and I would love to share some of the photos with you.

Warning: Some of these photos are pretty gross. I purposely kept them at a high resolution so you can see them in all their glory. Click on any of the thumbnails to view the high resolution version.

Edit: Added other computer technicians pictures that they sent in
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As I am sure some of you have already heard from various technology sites that Googles own browser called “Google Chrome” has just been released. If you havent got it yet, you can grab it here. I wont go really in depth telling you about all its features and how this will change the browser wars since there are plenty of sites for that, but I will talk about some of the features that relevant to technicians and whether we should start installing this on our clients computers.
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In the past we have had a few articles featuring what you take with you to computer repairs. For this article, I wanted to show you my Technician gear. I have taken two photos of my Technician bag and the parts that I take onsite with a description for each item. Hopefully this helps some beginner techs create their own.
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A poster on the Technibble forums recently mentioned that his client wanted him to provide and install pirate software onto their computer. He also mentioned that in his part of the world (the middle east) that pirate software is very common and readily available.

He asked our community whether he was handicapping his business by hesitating to provide pirate software when all the other technicians were doing it. It was a good question with a simple answer.
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Most techs with a few years of experience under their belt have probably come across the Windows XP corrupted registry hive problem at some point in their career. When it happens, Windows wont start and will present one of these messages:

• Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
• Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE
• Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate

In most cases, Safe mode wont work either. The uniform approach to fixing this is by getting into the Windows XP repair console and manually replacing the file with the copy that was created when the system was first installed. However, any software or drivers (depending on whether it was SOFTWARE or SYSTEM that failed) that was installed after that point may not work since the registries for them hadnt been installed back then.

Here is my method that I have been using to fix this. It reverts the registry to only a few days earlier rather than back to when Windows was first installed.
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The other day I misdiagnosed a computer problem. It rarely happens to me but it does happen. I was working on a computer inside a large residential building that frequently call me as new residents move in and find they are unable to connect to the buildings free internet. This is what happened and this is how I dealt with a misdiagnosis.
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