Weekend Work - Saturday, June 28

From my previous post, I wasn't feeling well yesterday. I woke up this morning doing well and decided to open up the shop instead of asking Kathy to do so.

In fact, I woke up early, so I decided to go in and grab some breakfast. I made my way into town and stopped by the Cracker Town Cafe. They have a breakfast buffet with all of the usual items, but I wasn't in the mood for it, so I opted to order off of the menu.

The waitress brought me my iced tea and breakfast burrito pretty quickly. I poured on the hot sauce and went to work on it. It really is more like a breakfast 'quesadilla', really, since it is a 'folded-flat-on-the-grill, eat-with-a-fork meal' and not your usual 'pick-up-and-eat breakfast tacos'.

Either way, it was good, and filling. I am glad I only ordered one.

My quick breakfast got me in to the office earlier than normal. That was good, as last evening when I arrived in town, one of my customers, Dan, called and had two machines that were exhibiting signs of being 'full of spyware' and he dropped them off. I started working on them immediately, putting both of them on the bench and running some spyware-removal tools to see how bad they were.

As it turned out, they were bad.

About 8:45 am I got my first call, asking if I was available to work on one [computer]. I told the caller to bring it in and he arrived in about 10 minutes. He stated the machine would shut down after about 15-20 minutes. Suspecting a clogged CPU fan, I pull the cover and found it was rather clean.

We put it on the bench and quickly found out the power supply fan wasn't functioning. He stated his brother-in-law had bought an identical machine and it 'smoked' and wasn't working any longer. He would bring it in later.

I suggested we replace the power supply fan since this power supply was proprietary. I pulled the power supply apart and put in another used fan that was spinning freely. The fan we pulled was all but locked up, clearly it was at least part of the problem.

We left it running for a good half-an-hour and it didn't restart, reboot, or exhibit any issues with heat while we looked for a replacement power supply for this Sony desktop with little luck.

As we discussed things, I come to find out he and I were related (distant cousins I believe). It is a small world, isn't it?

He left and I proceeded to continue working on Dan's two PCs.

Ken rolled in about that time to discuss our business venture. It didn't seem like things were looking too good. He had spent a good amount of time and money and was not seeing any return on his investment. He had a backup plan and he explained it in detail to me, along with a demonstration. Time will tell if this venture pans out. I hope so.

My cousin rolled back up, 'his' PC in hand.

'You did it good', he said. 'It smoked and won't come on'.

I looked closely and noticed it was a similar PC, but not the same one. My face must have had a puzzled because he took great joy in 'fooling' me. This was his brother-in-laws PC, the one that 'smoked' already. We assumed it was likely a power supply. I took it in, put it on the shelf and decided I would have to get some time to research where to buy a new power supply. We had little luck finding a replacement one for my cousin's (even from Sony). This was a slightly newer model Sony, though, so maybe it was available.

Ken had no longer left than a customer came in to drop off a notebook that was having some issues. The gentleman, Paul, had attempted to clean it up, but by his own admission, had 'made it worse' and he was handing it over to the expert. I took the notebook and put it on the bench next to Dan's and started cleaning it up too.

One of the local restauranters dropped by with a printer issue. It was a multi-function Canon and it was jamming when feeding paper. It was pretty dirty and that might be the issue. I took it in and would set it aside for Kathy when she arrived to work on. She's pretty good with printer issues.

Kathy called to say our friend Angelia's cousin would be bringing a PC in that was 'slow' and the speakers weren't working. They wanted to keep it under $100 to repair. That shouldn't be an issue, we aren't the 'Geek Squad', we offer a complete service at a reasonable price.

Our complete 'Critical Care Service' matches up directly with their 'Advanced Diagnostic & Repair' service at less than half the price. It really is a no-brainer. Not only do you save the 120-mile round trip to Wichita Falls (or Weatherford) from Graham to the nearest Best Buy, but our identical service is half the cost.

Chris dropped by for a quick chat. He regaled me with tales of his ride to San Diego on the train some time ago. It sounded like quite an adventure. It was certainly a chapter in a book he could write one day. He had been there about 15 minutes when the fire truck pulled up out front, lights blazing. Since I knew we weren't serving burgers here (inside joke), I went outside to see what was up. They went into the beauty shop next door. I don't know what happened, but they were there about 30-40 minutes total. I will have to inquire with my little brother, the paramedic, as to the issue.

Angelia's cousin pulled up and brought in her PC. Our initial conversation led me to believe it was malware. But, she said the sound only worked on occasion, so I would check that out too. I put it aside, as at the moment I had three on the bench working. I would get it done today, I told her and took her info down. Try that with the Geek Squad. The chances of getting it back today are virtually zilch. Maybe next week or the week after from all of the horror stories my customer's have told me.

Kathy pulled up and wondered what the fire truck was doing. Chris and I explained what we knew. About that time an ambulance pulled up to replace the fire truck. Whatever it was must be pretty serious.

Chris decided to leave and I continued working on the three PCs on the bench. At this time I realized I needed more monitors and bench space. While the initial scans are occuring, I can literally move from PC to PC to monitor their progress. Multi-tasking is my middle name.

Paul's PC wasn't too bad, overall. It was mostly the run-of-the-mill malware. It cleaned up pretty easily, but had one annoying problem that kept popping up. It seems the registry might be corrupt and it was able to recover itself each time. Unsure if this was a profile issue or not, I created a new user and logged in as it. The registry error persisted. A search on Google showed that sometimes running chkdsk helped. I booted into recovery mode and checked the disk. It found some errors, but didn't resolve the issue. Since Paul wasn't coming until tomorrow to pick it up, I put it aside, now malware free, for more research on the registry issue.

By this time it was lunch time and I was craving a Captain's Mate from Burger's and Billards. I called them up to order one up.

Bucket explained she was out of ham, so no Captain's Mate burgers. I settled for a Mini Bacon Cheeseburger with some onion rings and ordered Kathy the same. She would go pick them up while I continued the malware-removal fest.

I was making headway on Dan's two PCs and started working on Angelia's cousin's PC. It had the typical malware on it, along with the almost-always installed LimeWire. Every PC that comes through the doors with LimeWire has some type of malware running on it. I removed the malware, scanned for any viruses and checked the sound. Everything seemed in order.

Kathy worked on the printer, cleaning it out and wasn't able to reproduce the issue with the jamming of the paper. She printed probably 30-40 pages and it never jammed. I suspect the fine flour and other bits that were in the printer before it was cleaned could have contributed to the jams. We put it aside as 'done'.

I was able to finally put one of Dan's PCs aside as done and finished up with Angelia's cousin's PC. Kathy had gone to the store to pick up some groceries for tomorrow and some other gift items for Zach's first birthday. We would be going there after work today.

A customer from last weekend brought in a tower and said it was on, but nothing would come on the screen and it wouldn't shut down. I took it in and told her it would be tomorrow morning before I could look at it. Her laptop, I worked on last week or the week before, was doing well, she said.

A few moments later I looked outside and saw some rain and heard the thunder. When I glanced across the street I could see the big trees bending in the wind. I grabbed the open flag and brought it inside before it became a missile.

I estimate wind gusts of 60-70mph and a driving rain. Kathy called from the store and wondered how long it would last, so I looked at the radar and said it didn't look like it would last too long. Then, I noticed some pea-sized hail that lasted for about 30-45 seconds and worried about her SRT/4 sitting outside. It cleared up a few minutes and then the bottom dropped out and it drenched us, literally, for about an hour, dumping 3.57" of rain on us in a very short period of time.

I called the restaurant and told them their printer was ready. The owner called back and said he would be right there. When he arrived he accidentally dropped 'two' coins into the back of the printer. I only saw one go in and was able to retrieve it, but he thinks two went in. So, we tore the printer apart on the front counter, but could never find the second coin. I shook the printer every way possible and never heard it. He and I decided if we couldn't shake it loose, it probably wasn't going anywhere and called it good. We tested it to make sure everything still works after our dissection on the counter. It did, so he loaded it up and went back to the restaurant.

I called Angelia's cousin and told her the PC was ready. Since it was raining hard and the baby was asleep she opted to wait until tomorrow to pick it up.

Looking at the clock, it was almost 6:00 pm and still pouring rain. Fourth Street was a river and some of the low-lying intersections down the street were closed due to high water.

Jason called and wondered if we were going to make it to the birthday party and I told him we were just wrapping up, waiting on a break in the weather. He said the burgers were on, so we wrapped everything up and started that way.