You may be a brilliant technician, but providing computer training is a completely different game than fixing a computer. It doesn’t rely so much on technical skills; instead it requires social and teaching skills which many computer technicians don’t necessarily have. Here are some tips I learnt over the last 8 years to be the best computer teacher you can be.
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Yesterday, I had a client bring their laptop into my workshop because it kept turning off after a certain amount of time. My first guess was that it was overheating as I have seen this kind of thing before. I booted the laptop into BIOS and sure enough, the temperature was slowly rising until it reached the 90 degree celsius range and shut down.

I flipped the laptop onto its back and saw the cooling fan and plenty of hair in it so I am assuming the heatsink is probably clogged like in this picture of a laptop I took about a year ago.

Now, the client had driven about 45 minutes to my place because they got a really good referral about me from their friend. I figured this wouldn’t take very long so I told them they can stick around while I clear it out (I have done this many times before). I took out all the screws I could see but the laptop case wouldn’t open. I looked a little more and found some hidden clips, undid them but it still wouldn’t open up. I searched under stickers and the rubber feet for screw holes but it still wasn’t opening.
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I had a shady client today. I first talked to them on Friday but it was only today that I released that they wanted me to do something shady. That Friday, I got a call from a new client saying that wants me “to make it so she can logon to the laptop without using the fingerprint scanner”.
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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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