[...]... Preface Sooner or later, most PC users find themselves confronted with hardware or software failure or the need to upgrade or optimize a system for some new application Newnes PC Troubleshooting Pocket Book provides a concise and compact reference which describes in a clear and straightforward manner the principles and practice of fault finding and upgrading PCs This book is aimed a t anyone who is... of frustration! To take into account the relentless advance in PC technology, this new edition has been considerably updated and extended and several completely new sections have been included on troubleshooting in the Windows environment and associated software Happy troubleshooting! Michael Tooley, Howard Anderson ix 1 Introduction PC troubleshooting covers a very wide variety of activities including... they have changed the system, e.g ‘I only ran a C D from a PC games magazine !’ e Toddler has posted toys in any or all of the spaces/holes in the PC e Mobile phone interference 4 Strong magnetic field (Causes odd colours on monitor, usual culprit, Hi-Fi speakers) PC was dropped a The layer of dust that forms on PC boards has become damp e The PC did work, hardware has been changed It could be (in no... spend several hours attempting to repair it 1.1 A brief history of the PC The original IBM PC was announced in 1981 and made its first appearance in 1982 The PC had an 8088 central processing.unit and a mere 64K bytes of system board RAM The basic RAM was, however, expandable to an almost unheard of total of 640K bytes The original PC supported two 360K byte floppy disk drives, an 80 column x 25 line... companies assemble PC- compatible systems using individual components and boards imported from Far-East manufacturers In many cases these systems offer performance specifications which rival those of well-known brands; however, the constituent parts may be of uncertain pedigree 1.3 General approach to troubleshooting 3 1.2 Conventions used in this book The following conventions are used in this book: 1 Special... run on them This chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book and explains the underlying principles of troubleshooting and fault finding This book makes very few assumptions about your previous experience and the level of underpinning knowledge which you may or may not have You should at least be familiar with the basic constituents of a PC system: system unit, display, keyboard and mouse In addition,... to 'clone' the PC; indeed, one could be forgiven for thinking that the highest accolade that could be offered by the computer press was that a machine was 'IBM compatible' This was because the PC was made from 'off-the-shelf' components In a short time almost identical machines became avaikabk at a fraction of the cost from a wide range of companies and became known as 'IBM compatible' PCs These now... protocol as most browsers will assume the http protocol 1.3 General approach to troubleshooting Whatever your background it is important to develop a systematic approach to troubleshooting right from the start This will help you to cope with obscure as well as routine faults TIP: It is important to realize that most faults with PCs can be fixed by changing software or software settings, so avoid taking... became avaikabk at a fraction of the cost from a wide range of companies and became known as 'IBM compatible' PCs These now dominate the market place What were called IBM PCs are now just called PCs Since those early days, the IBM PC has become the 'de facto' standard for personal computing Other manufacturers (such as Apple, Commodore and Atari) have produced systems with quite different specifications... manufacture or to incorrect specification In the case of a PC, ‘burn-in’ should continuously exercise all parts of the system, including floppy and hard disk drives TIP: It is always wise to ‘soak test‘ a system following any troubleshooting activity particularly if it involves the replacement of an item of hardware 1.11 What is fitted in your PC? There is some very good (free) software available that . y0 w0 h0 " alt="" Newnes PC Troubleshooting Pocket Book Newnes PC Troubleshooting Pocket Book Second edition Howard Anderson and Mike Tooley @ Newnes AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG. Technology) specification machines which were based on an 80286 microprocessor (rather than the 8088 used in its predecessors) together with 256K bytes of RAM fitted to the system board. The. you hear, see, or smell anything when the system failed? 9. What was actually happening when the system crashed? appear? were you dissatisfied with its performance:' how has it changed?