Does your computer, laptop, or iPod make clicking, scraping, pinging, or other strange sounds? Is it also behaving sluggishly or otherwise funny? Chances are (if it’s not something stuck in the fan), your hard drive is dead or dying, and hopefully, you have a backup of your important data. Spinning-disk hard drives, as opposed to solid-state (flash) hard drives, use a spinning platter to store data and an arm to read them, much like a phonograph or gramophone. If you don’t know what that is, even better. One major difference however, is in hard drives, the “needle,” or “head”, does not contact the platter.. that is, until you hear the weird noises (bad news). It normally floats on a cushion of air above the platter, and uses magnetics to read/write onto it.

Common sources of data loss: physical damage
Ever drop or jar your laptop as it’s accessing a file? This can force the head(s) into the spinning platter, causing all sorts of damage to your drive. If you’re lucky, it only contacts the platter for a bit, causing minimal damage. Otherwise, the heads can actually rip the magnetic substrate off of the platters, taking your data with it. It’s also possible to rip head(s) off of their mechanical arms, disabling the hard drive, requiring a head stack replacement or platter transfer to recover data. This procedure is difficult and can cost thousands of dollars.

Electric failure
There is a printed circuit board (PCB) that controls the movement of the head arm and the spin of the platter(s) in your drive. If that becomes destroyed by electric shock, burn, or arc, it is usually possible to replace the PCB and remove the data. Electric shock generally does not destroy the data on the drive, just the circuitry controlling it. The work should be done with electrostatic discharge in mind, but is relatively simple. The most common pitfall here is replacing the PCB with one that is similar. The PCB must be exact, down to the revision level of the software on it. Otherwise, the head will not be able to find the files on your platter(s).

Logical damage
Logical damage may occur if your hard drive loses electrical power during a writing operation. This could happen in a viral attack, power outage, system crash, or other interruption. In this case, file system structures are partially written to the drive. This can cause strange behavior such as folders within folders or folders containing negatively sized files. Sometimes logical errors may cause clicking sounds.

Human error
This is one of the most common sources of data loss. Deleting, misplacing, and overwriting files are very common ways to lose your term paper, accounting for about one third of lost data. It is sometimes possible to recover data that have been overwritten, although there is much debate about extracting data that have been overwritten more than once. If you delete a file on accident, even from the recycling bin, stop using your computer and hand the drive over to someone who knows what they’re doing. This, of course means that, even if you delete something from the recycling bin, it’s not actually gone.

Data recovery vs data extraction
There is common confusion about the difference between data recovery and extraction. Data extraction is generally required when the electronics surrounding the hard drive fail. For example, your laptop’s motherboard is fried, nothing is wrong with your drive, and you want to get your photos off of the drive. The process involves removing the hard drive from the laptop and accessing it via another computer.

Data recovery is required when the hard drive itself has a malfunction, such as one of the ones described above. There are many types of data recovery. Here are some of the more common types:

1. PCB replacement: this is the replacement of the PCB on the hard drive that is used to correct PCB failure.
2. Imaging: this technique generally reads the drive bit by bit so that attempts may be made to rebuild files on another hard drive. This technique is labor and computing intensive so it tends to be expensive.
3. Carving: this is a very labor intensive recovery technique for hard drives that have lost their allocation information. This is basically the legend that tells the hard drive where files begin and end.
4. Head stack replacement: a head stack replacement may be necessary if the head array is damaged, usually due to physical trauma. This requires trained technicians in a cleanroom environment and tends to be expensive. The hard drive is opened, and the faulty mechanical arm is replaced by one from a healthy drive.
5. Platter transplant: This is another other option if a hard drive head stack is damaged. The platters are extracted from the faulty drive and put into a healthy drive case. This must also be done by a trained technician in a cleanroom environment.
6. Freezing: In some cases, unstable hard drives (those that are only accessible for short periods of time by operating systems) can be made stable for longer by dipping them in ice, or running them from inside your freezer. While this is not recommended, it may be a last resort for recovering data that is not worth thousands of dollars.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Have your iPod or cell go through the wash? Spill coffee on your keyboard at the cafe? Liquid damage is one of the most common causes of laptop, iPod, and cellphone death and destruction that we see. We all know that water and electricity don’t mix – but not all is lost.

If you act quickly and don’t panic, there are steps that you can take to boost your chances of saving your water or other liquid damaged electronics. Hopefully, by the time you read this, you’ve already done step 1:

Power off the device/pull out the battery, power cord, or other power source IMMEDIATELY

At this point you can get a lot of different advice. We’ve heard anything from dunking the device in alcohol to blowdrying to baking it in the oven. If you’re gonna dunk it in alcohol, make sure it’s as close to pure as possible (don’t use that 70% rubbing alcohol stuff).

You should really take it apart as soon as possible to dry the insides, but if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you can usually get by with some other methods. The only problem with this is that, while you might dry the insides eventually, they may corrode and short the circuits, especially if you drop it in anything except pure water (snow that’s been salted, a lake, a bowl of soup, etc).

You might be tempted to take a blowdryer to the device, or worse, bake it. This might cause the device to become very hot since you can’t really control the heat very well. It also causes condensation which really just repositions the water in your device. You might see the inside of your screen fog up. It’s not ideal.

This is the part where we test your patience. You need to dry the device as much as possible, which means time, especially if you don’t want to take it aprat. If you have a dehumidifier, place it by the intake. If you have a bowl of rice, pop your device into it (DRY rice.. it absorbs water).

Whatever you decide to do, give it at least 48 hours to dry properly before plugging in the battery or power source. If you don’t wait, you could fry your device.

If it’s something other than water that soaked your device, cleaning it might get trickier. Pull the battery first. Then, you’ll have to clean it with demineralized water or pure alcohol. You really need to take the device apart in this case.

Unfortunately, most warranties do not cover water damage, unless otherwise specified. Some devices have an indicator that changes color when wet, so if you try to get a warranty replacement for a device that has a water damage, your claim will be denied. Those who have insurance or a warranty — which should be everyone should still be able to file a claim.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Research In Motion (RIM), creater of the BlackBerry line, has reported a vulnerability which may expose some users to attack by “phishing” hackers. The report indicates that the flaw could allow a hacker to mislead a BlackBerry owner into visiting a malicious website. BlackBerry users caught by the scheme would find themselves at what might appear to be a legitimate site, but it is in fact designed to capture visitor data for malicious purposes.

The phishing link, typically forwarded in emails or IMs, immitates a legitimate BlackBerry website, but contains characters that are hidden. The browser dialog box informs the user when there is a mismatch between the domain names in the target site name and that indicated in the associated certificate, but does not properly illustrate that the mismatch is due to the presence of some hidden characters in the site domain. That is, the site domain and the certificates appear to match because the software does not display the hidden characters. If you see a pop up similar to the one below, you should select “Close connection” in order to eliminate exposure of your data, unless you know exactly what you’re doing (or you’re feeling lucky).

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Got viruses? Corrupted or lost some Windows files? Want to upgrade? Here’s a guide to help you install Windows XP from a CD or DVD. This should work for any hard drives before the SATA generation. If you’re not sure about your drive, check online using the model of your drive (found in the “device manager” or on the sticker on your drive). Keep in mind that if you’re trying to “downgrade” from Vista to XP, you’re probably going to need a slipstreamed XP installer that has SATA drivers, which is beyond the scope of this article.

Let’s get started.  Make sure you have all of your files backed up because this will format your hard drive.  Make sure the computer is set to boot from CD/DVD.  You can do this usually by pressing one of the F keys (F2, F10, and F12 are common)  during the first boot screen.

You should see something like:

Press any key before it times out.  It will start loading some files.  After all the files are loaded you will get the following screen:

 
To install a fresh copy of XP hit enter (RECOMMENDED)

Press F8 to continue. You will get a screen where all the hard drives will be listed, depending on the size of your hard drive and how many drives you have the screen will look different:

For a fresh install select the hard drive you want to install the Windows to and hit D (if you have more than one partition and want to delete them, select the partition you want to delete and follow the steps below)

Hit Enter on this screen to delete the partition.

Hit L on this screen.  ALL FILES WILL BE DESTROYED!

Press ENTER to select Unpartitioned space, which appears by default.

 
If you have a lot of viruses/spyware its best to perform a full format (recommended) which is the 3^rd option (takes longer, could take an hour or more depending on the size of drive) otherwise select quick (a matter of seconds)

.

Press ENTER again to select Format the partition using the NTFS file system, which appears by default.

You will see this screen..

If everything is good, Windows will start installing. Windows XP reboots the computer and then continues with the installation process. From this point forward, you can use your mouse. Eventually, the Regional and Language Options page appears.

Click Next to accept the default settings.

 
On the Personalize Your Software page, type your name and your organization name. Then, click Next.

On the Your Product Key page, type your product key as it appears on your Windows XP CD case. Then, click Next

On the Computer Name and Administrator Password page, in the Computer name box, type a name, such as PC or JOHNS. You cannot use spaces or punctuation.

On the Date and Time Settings page, set your computer’s clock. Then, click the Time Zone down arrow, and select your time zone. Click Next.

Windows XP will spend about a minute configuring your computer. On the Networking Settings page, click Next.

On the Workgroup or Computer Domain page, click Next.

Windows XP will spend 20 or 30 minutes configuring your computer and will automatically restart when finished. When the Display Settings dialog appears, click OK.

When the Monitor Settings dialog box appears, click OK.

The final stage of setup begins. On the Welcome to Microsoft Windows page, click Next.

On the Help protect your PC page, click Help protect my PC by turning on

Automatic Updates now. Then, click Next.

Select whether or not you want to register Windows.  It’s optional.

Click Next, and you should be done!

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Recently we’ve gotten a lot of complaints about the trackball getting stuck in certain directions on a couple of models of BlackBerry phones. Especially popular is the Pearl’s trackball getting stuck for whatever reason. Sometimes it moves in a couple of directions, but not in one (some of ours don’t like to roll to the right).

If you’re careful, it’s pretty easy to remove the trackball for cleaning on a couple of the BlackBerry models, the Curve, Pearl, 8800, 8820 and 8830 to name a few. Unfortunately the Bold has to be disassembled.
Use something like your nail or a credit card to remove the silver ring around the trackball. This is really the only spot where things can go wrong so don’t force it out.

Drop the trackball out and clean the rollers.

Each roller inside the sensor array corresponds to a scrolling direction. Clean the gunk out of each of these. You can use rubbing alcohol to clean the trackball itself. Roll it around to clean the sides you cannot see as well.

To reassemble, just reverse the disassembly process. If this doesn’t help, you might need to replace your trackball.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Replacing the glass on an iPod touch can be dangerous if it’s cracked. Be careful and wear gloves when handling broken glass. This guide takes you through replacing the screen and digitizer, not the LCD. It is assumed that your LCD is still functional.

We recommended that you use some tape to cover up the broken screen. This will contain any shards of glass if they break off of the screen while you remove it. Something like:

iPod touch 2nd Gen A1288

Insert the plastic tool, or “spudger”, into the gap between the front panel glass and the chrome backing. We’ve found that guitar picks are useful as well if you don’t have a spudger or can’t get it to work. An easy place to start is the top-left, as shown:

iPod touch 2nd Gen A1288

The glass sits on a plastic bezel that is held onto the chrome backing by metal clips. It’s helpful to use a metal tool to get the first clips off:

iPod touch 2nd Gen A1288

Work your way carefully around the iPod unclipping those. Do not rush this part, as you could break some internals, or rip the digitizer ribbon (if you’re replacing the digitizer, it’s moot, but better go slower anyway).

iPod touch 2nd Gen A1288

The digitizer ribbon is connected to the logic board at the top-left corner of the iPod. Disconnect this and you should be able to take the bezel, digitizer, glass assembly off.

iPod touch 2nd Gen A1288

Hopefully you’ve ordered a spare bezel with your glass/digitizer replacement. It’s almost impossible to seperate this from the iPod and then from the broken glass without breaking it. If you got it off without breaking it, kudos. If it’s not too badly damaged, you can glue it together with superglue. If not, we need to attach the replacement bezel to the replacement glass and digitizer.

Your bezel probably did not come with a button attached. Pry the old button off of the old bezel if you are replacing it. Scrape off the small plastic dots so they become flush with the button’s backing. Then, pry off the button and place it on the new bezel.

iPod touch 2nd Gen A1288

SLOWLY put the new glass/digitizer/bezel assembly back together, making sure the inside compartments are dust/fingerprint free, but also while aligning the button with the button hole on the glass. If you have particles on the LCD, tear a piece of paper and use the corner to carefully remove them. Smudge marks may be removed with a clean lens cloth.

If you’re careful, you can turn the iPod on at this point and get a display and a working digitizer. Turn the power off again and put the replacement in place, pressing lightly all the way around the edge of the glass. Hopefully, once you put the iPod back together, you get a display:

iPod touch 2nd Gen A1288

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Here’s how to back up and restore your 3rd party apps on your Blackberry. This should work for PC users with Blackberry Desktop Manager (written for v5.0)… sorry Mac.

Backup
Step 1:
Connect your BlackBerry to your PC and open the BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Click the “Switch Device Wizard” button. On the “switch device dialog box”, click the “Switch BlackBerry Devices” button.

Step 2:
Select your device and make sure the “allow me to select applications….” button is checked. Click “Next”. If you have a password, enter it and continue.

Step 3:
If you just want your apps, check “Third Party Applications” and leave “Include Messages” and “User Data Settings” unchecked. Click the Next button.

Step 4:
Once the operation is complete, do NOT click next or cancel. Search your PC for files and folders with the same name as your BlackBerry PIN. Make sure you search hidden folders as well. You may also type %temp% in the path bar of an explorer window and find the folder that’s named by your PIN.

Step 5:
Copy the folder with your PIN as the name to a safe location. This is your backup.

Step 6:
You may now cancel and close the BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Your backup is complete!

Restoring Your 3rd party Applications
Step 1:
Plug in your BlackBerry to your PC

Step 2:
Launch the “Application Loader” and click the “Add” button

Step 3:
Find your backup file, by default called YOURPIN.alx, where YOURPIN is your PIN. Click Start!

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

How to transfer music from your iPod to your PC

There are a couple of ways to do this, but unfortunately, most are not free. Enter iDump (Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000). iDump is a great little app that lets you copy your files from your iPod to your PC using an explorer.

Connect your iPod to your PC and drop the .exe file in the root directory on your iPod. Run it from there through explorer while your iPod remains connected and you’ll have access to all of your songs. Select the songs you want to transfer then pick a destination directory and the naming protocol.

You can grab iDump from CNET.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Is your Mac iBook’s video flaky? Does putting pressure around the middle left of the base fix the video momentarilly? Chances are your graphics chip has a cracked solder joint. Basically, there’s a chip on the motherboard that is used for some video processing. The chip has a faulty solder connection to the motherboard. For more background on the issue, see this article, and for more technical info, see this report.

There are at least three remedies for this problem that we’ve found, all of which have varying degrees of difficulty and efficacy. All of them require opening the Mac.. ready?

Opening the G4:
Take out the battery. Pry off the four corner stands, as below:

Mac g4

Take out the screws on the bottom of the base. You’ll need a torx driver for some of these.

Remove the two screws in the battery well :

Mac g4

Pinch the plastic around the battery well to pry it off

Mac g4

Use a screwdriver and pry off the small slot in the battery well.

Mac g4

Work your way around the base with a soft tool to prevent damage.

Mac g4

When you have 3 sides pried off, lift up on the front, and the base should come apart:

Mac g4

Take out the screws holding the metal shield:

Mac g4

Pulling up the black power ribbon reveals the Vreg chip

Mac g4

Option #1)
If pressure or a GPU reset (holding command-ctrl-A-V during startup) fixes video temporarily, the easiest of the remedies to try is to put some sort of wedge on top of the Vreg chip. This might not work for long however, since the wedge will eventually settle and release pressure on the chip. Anyway, it’s worth a shot, and is a good test to try before trying the other remedies.

Option #2)
Try to remelt the solder around pins 1 and 28. These are the two shown here, pin 1 denoted by the dimple on the chip, pin 28 across from it.

Mac g4

It’s possible to do this with a heat gun, but a soldering iron is more precise. Hold one to the two pins for a few seconds. If you smell something burning, it’s probably long enough. Make sure you apply pressure to the chip while you do this to ensure a good connection when the joint reflows. Consider epoxying the ends of the chip so it does not move off of the board:

Mac g4

Unless you’re a gambler, we wouldn’t recommend covering the pins with epoxy since you might have to go with option 3 in the future. Put something heavy on the chip while the epoxy cures.

Option #3)
If the above options failed, the last option before purchasing a new motherboard is to resolder pin 28. This is usually the first to go, presumably because it is a power pin for the chip. You could also try pin 1 if you want. Scrape off some of the green PCB plastic around the pin.

Mac g4

Solder the pin to the PCB and make sure the solder flows over the pin. We usually use a blade to protect neighboring pins 27 and 2:

Mac g4

With any luck and steady hands, you should be able to get the pins resoldered properly. Something like:

Mac g4

Epoxy the ends of the chip as above. Close up your Mac, and good luck.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Some basics:

If you use the internet, you run the risk of a malicious attack by hackers from anywhere in the world. You can take some simple steps to secure your computer.

Firewalls
Firewalls are probably your best friend on the internet. There is plenty free and legal software to allow someone to find information about your computer relatively easily if you have no firewall. Not having a firewall enabled is akin to waving an “attack me” flag. If you have a weak password (discussed below) in addition, your will inevitably be attacked, whether by software or hackers.

How do you defend yourself? Turn on your firewall! It just takes one click in the control panel. You can also use a firewall program like ZoneAlarm or a device such as a router.

Passwords
The easiest way to be attacked online is to have a weak password or no password at all. Take for example your administrator account on your laptop. If it has no password, it takes almost no effort to gain access to all of your files. If you don’t have a password, and your firewall is off, someone in Tajikistan could be listening to your mp3s or deleting your term paper, forcing you to look consider a data recovery service. You should also rename your administrator account from “Administrator” to something else. This makes it harder for someone to break in.

How do you protect yourself? Easy! Microsoft recommends using at least seven characters. Mix in some symbols, numbers, capital and lower-case letters, and you’ve got yourself a decent password. If your password is “jane123”, it takes almost no time for an experienced hacker to guess – there is plenty software that does all the work. Change that to J@nE12#!, and there’s almost no way to crack it without a supercomputer. Although less critical, you can use the same idea when setting up email and other passwords.

Viruses, Spyware, Adware, Trojans, Malware, Pop-ups, Phishing, etc
Even if you have a strong password and a good firewall, you’re not quite out of the water yet. It’s easy to come across some malicious software while surfing the net or reading email. Your computer can even get infected by simply visiting a site! This category is one of the most common ways to be attacked online. These programs can do anything from gather information about your net surfing habits to stealing credit card information to destroying your operating system. Use P2P software such as Limewire, Kazaa, DC++ or other sharing programs? You’re opening a door for malicious software into your computer.

You can take steps to protect yourself against these threats. Use common sense. If you get a file or a link from someone promising you something free, don’t open it. Install anti virus software. You can choose from a myriad of free and paid software, each with advantages and disadvantages too complex to describe here. If you already have a virus, installing one of these will probably not be effective. You need to have these installed BEFORE you get a virus or spyware.

Make sure you have automatic updates enabled if you use Windows. Microsoft releases many security related patches which may protect you.

You should also disable hidden shares if you use Windows 2000 or XP. These can be used by hackers to gain access to ANY your files if they have your username and password.

Unfortunately, many viruses target Internet Explorer and Outlook Express because these packages are so popular. A simple security precaution might be to use another browser or email client, or at the very least, set IE’s security settings to high.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.