I had to repair 3 computers yesterday. Yes, and one of them was my own. Regardless, I swear, the next person who asks me to do some work on their computer is going to get a dirty bomb UPSed to their house. However, the dirty bomb will not be nuclear - oh no, it will actually spray fecal matter at them.

The first of them was one of the most unbelievably slow computers I’ve ever seen. There was very little reason for it to be slow. However, I should start at the beginning.

Windows simply wouldn’t start up, whether it be in safe mode or normal mode. So, the obvious fix was reinstalling Windows. That went fine and the files remained on the hard drive. That was all I needed to do (I thought), but I just wanted to make sure there was nothing else I could do to improve efficiency. I initially thought it needed defragmentation, badly - it took about 5 minutes in total to get from the XP loading screen to the desktop. However, I was surprised when I found only 5% file fragmentation and only 10 GB used. Additionally, the integrated NIC didn’t work. Luckily I had a PCI card in one of my own computers, so I put that in there to fix the problem.

Apparently the computer actually had SP2 on it when I reinstalled Windows, so that overwrote some stuff and made services not work. It took awhile until I could finally get Windows Update to realize SP2 was not installed on the computer. After that I did spyware and adware checks. I thought that would solve the slowness, but it didn’t. There were a few random programs in the startup at the beginning *cough* AOL, McAffee *cough* so I took them off the routine and it was good as new.

The second computer was one I’ve kept someone waiting 3 months on. It needs a reinstall of Windows Me and I don’t have a disc, so I sent it back to him. I bet he won’t be too happy.

The third computer was my laptop. Awhile back, its DC power in port stopped working correctly. It only sporadically charged the computer. So, I sent it back to HP (with 3 days left on the extended warranty) and they “fixed” it. Don’t get me wrong, they fixed the problem and they replaced the hard drive (which was starting to go as well). However, I received it back with several scratches on the paint and with Windows 98 installed. Yes, you heard me; Windows 98. What company even has a copy of Windows 98 installed on replacement hard drives? Don’t ask me. I wasn’t particularly mad, however, that the hard drive was decimated. The computer was growing slow anyway and starting fresh will do it some good anyway.