Laptop / Desktop Repairs & Upgrades

• Laptop Lcd Repair Laptop
• DC(power) Jack Repair
• Laptop Battery Replacement
• Laptop Keyboard Replacement
• Laptop & Desktop Motherboard Replacement
• Laptop & Desktop Power Supplies
• Laptop & Desktop Hard drive upgrades
• Laptop & Desktop Ram upgrades

Click the Orange Arrow to find out more specifics, and when you might just need to repair or replace these items!

Laptop LCD (display) Repair

Accidents and failures happen, and fixing your favorite laptop's display does not have to cost a fortune. It is a common misconception that getting your laptop's lcd repaired or replaced would cost more than the laptop is worth. Below are the common failures and fixes that deal with the laptop LCD:

• Cracked LCD - non uniform dark, black parts of display, horizontal and/ or vertical lines or patterns, jagged lines with large splotchy areas of black or white. See more examples HERE
  

• Bad contacts between driver circuitry and LCD panel    - uniform portions of the screen filled with vertical or  horizontal lines of varying color, single or multiple lines running vertically or horizontally through the whole screen.  Gently "twisting" the lcd may make the line(s) disappear , but in most instances will return

Laptop LCD (display) Repair

Typical Repair Costs:

Laptop DC(power) Jack Repair

Over time, where you plug in the laptop, the dc power jack can  become worn or loose. Tripping over the power cord while it is plugged in will usually cause the jack to become loose or even completely broken off of the motherboard of the laptop. Typical symptoms include:

• Battery no longer charging
• Random, complete shut offs
• Sparking from dc jack area
• Power adapter plug easily falling out

Laptop Keyboard Replacement

Ahh, the dreaded spill of a beverage on a  keyboard!!

• "Key" #1, is not to panic!          
• Unplug anything and everything from the laptop
• Power down forcefully (if the laptop has not shut down by itself, which it may do) by holding down the power button for ~5secs.
• If system tries to go into hibernation, do not let it do so by continually holding down the power button
• Soak up any standing liquid, but very gently, putting as little pressure on the keyboard as possible
• Pull the battery, Tilt laptop to the cd-rom/dvd corner, and hold to drain any liquid that may be underneath the keyboard

Laptop Keyboard Replacement

Laptop Adapter,Batteries & Desktop Power Supply Replacement

ComputeRx carries a wide assortment of laptop ac adapters & batteries. Buying from us will not only take the guess work of which adapter or battery to get, but also save you a decent amount of money. Buying a battery directly from the manufacturer will usually cost $150 or more. Buying an adapter from your local big box store will cost at least $80 because they are of the universal type, a one type fits all adapter. We also carry high quality power supplies for desktops.

Laptop & Desktop Motherboard Replace/Repair

The motherboard (aka logic board, mainboard), of  a computer is what connects the cpu, ram, hard drive, video, sound and all other peripherals together to form a fully functional system. If a portion or a component of it is faulty, the entire system can be in an unusable state. Symptoms include: (with known good ram, power supply, and excluding software issues )

• System does not boot, blinking power light, system beeping
• Freezing, restart loops
• Random shutdowns, graphics glitches
• Blue screen of death errors (B.S.O.D)

Laptop & Desktop Motherboard Replace/Repair

Laptop & Desktop Hard Drive Upgrade/Repair

The hard drive of a computer serves as the storage area. The operating system files, installed software, and any user created or downloaded files, are stored on the hard drive. It is usually a misconception that putting files on the hard drive or having too many files on the hard drive will slow the computer down (unless of course the files are viruses or bad software programs, see my software section HERE). While this is true if the hard drive becomes ENTIRELY full, simply putting files onto a hard drive will not slow down the computer or make it run incorrectly.
Fragmentation (slow access times of files where parts of the files can be on different areas of the hard drive) while not totally irrelevant today, is not as much of an issue as it once was. With more efficient formatting techniques (ie FAT32 vs NTFS), automatic defragmentation (Vista&7) in the background, & primarily the much larger and faster hard drives we now have, fragmentation is not as much a concern as it once was. What is much more of a concern, is when a hard drive actually starts to fail. Typical symptoms include:

• No OS found, no bootable partition, missing system32 file errors
• Kernel panics, Apple logo with blinking question mark
• System lock ups, data unreadable & device I/O error messages
• Blue screen of death errors (B.S.O.D), clicking/scraping noises

Laptop & Desktop Hard Drive Upgrade/Repair

The most common issue with hard drives is that over time, the magnetized platters that store the data start accruing bad sections or sectors .This type of failure usually gets worse over time, but if you get the data off in time, most of it will still be salvageable. There are also a number of mechanical failures that can occur dealing with the read and write heads and the spindle motors of the drives. Complete non power-on situations can sometimes be dealt with by transferring the pcb control board of the drive from another drive, however it must be from the exact same model & firmware of  drive.

Currently there are 3 main types of mechanical hard drives: IDE(PATA), SATA, and SCSI drives. SATA II drives are right now the standard for desktops & laptops but Solid State Drives (SSDs) are on the near horizon of being the standard (once they become more affordable). They offer three large advantages over the mechanical drives mentioned: no moving parts, less power consumption, and faster access speeds.

If you suspect hard drive issues, don't hesitate to contact ComputeRx, as we can help with either of the issues listed above. We can also assist if you want to upgrade to a larger, faster hard drive, while keeping everything you have intact (including the operating system and programs), It is always a good idea to have a backup solution; ComputeRx can help in that department as well.

Laptop & Desktop Ram Upgrade/Replace

Ram (random access memory) of a computer serves as the temporary working and storage area for the processor, a.k.a. CPU, of a system. The operating system and any application communicates with the CPU to carry out its desired task. An application will place its relevant data in ram so that the CPU has fast access to it. Once a system's ram is totally allocated to the operating system and other applications, subsequent ram requests from the CPU for processes that need ram, in effect, have to wait their turn for ram to become available, or will use the function of virtual memory , thus slowing the system down  (more on that on the next page). Upgrading your system's ram is an easy way to increase a system's performance.

Defective ram will usually render a system unusable. If one ram module out of four is bad, you would want to replace it as the general rule of thumb is that you want to have like pairs of ram modules. Typical symptoms of defective ram include:

• System not booting (with possible beep codes)
• No Display, graphics glitches, Kernel panics 
• System freezing, restart loops, system32 error messages
• Blue screen of death errors (B.S.O.D)

Laptop & Desktop Ram Upgrade/Replace

    There are many types of ram, some of which are no longer used or just never caught on as the standard because of the cost of manufacturing (ie rdram). Regular sdram modules are categorized as pc100 or pc133. DDR or double data rate ram is more current and faster than pc100/pc133 sdram. The three most popular types are DDR, DDR2 & DDR3.The three types are notched differently to tell them apart, but they also vary in speed and density. Generally when looking to replace or upgrade ram, you will want to go for ram that is low in density. You can generally go for the highest in frequency that that particular ddr ram supports as they are backwards compatible for slower speeds. For a chart comparison and general pricing see HERE                                             As mentioned, when a system has its ram resources completely used, the overall responsiveness of the computer will be slow. A temporary portion of the hard drive, a.k.a. the page file,  is set aside for such a case. However the access times to and from the hard drive are a lot slower than that of ram, so even though it keeps things operative, it is still not the ideal solution. If you have ever seen a pop up by the system time on Windows machines that "Your system is low on virtual memory" that is the paging file at work. That could be a sign to look into upgrading your memory  as constant reading from the page file is known as disk thrashing and in turn the system will  become unresponsive or slow.                                                   ComputeRx will help you when you need to replace or upgrade you ram. Software maintenance and virus protection & removal is equally as crucial for a fast/responsive system.Visit my software section HERE to see how.