Monday 3 December 2012

PC Deals from Computer Solutions

Compatible & Original Laptop Adapters From Computer Solutions

Replacement Laptop Screens From Computer Solutions

Replacement Laptop Keyboards From Computer Solutions

Treat yourself to a new PC this Christmas. Fantastic Deals from Computer Solutions !

Kenilworth Computer Repairs Mobile Computer Maintenance, Repair, and I.T Desktop Support Services for Kenilworth, Warwick, Royal Leamington Spa, Rugby, Stratford on Avon, Coventry, Solihull and environs.

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Kenilworth Computer Repairs News mobile PC repair service Kenilworth FoxPro or Visual FoxPro language Testimonials Stratford, Warwick Computer Repair Services computer repair service. Solihull Home Links Computer Services Rugby Operating Systems Areas covered P.C Maintenance Email Us Coventry Where are we? Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks Upgrade or New? Leamington Spa Tweet Hardware & Software Computer Repairs www.kenilworthcomputerrepairs.com

Monday 5 November 2012

Windows 8 Reviewed

Windows 8 is here and looking around the various forums it seems that there are very widely differing and very mixed feelings about it, depending on whether you are a corporate or domestic customer.

Some people are saying they absolutely love it and will go out of their way to recommend it, whilst others feel that Microsoft have in made a retrograde step. Only time and no doubt numerous updates will tell and decide who is right.

It seems that many corporate customers have only very recently upgraded from XP to Windows 7. This is a testament to just how good XP was. With more and more Operating Systems available, some of which are free, it might look like Microsoft's dominance in this sector could well be over.

Lets get to the point. Windows 8 is primarily designed to run on tablet devices and has been designed to compete with Apple's iPad and Google's range of Android devices. Microsoft, a late entrant into the tablet market, seems to have put this first rather than the faithful desktop users on which they built their reputation.

As a Computer Repair Business based in Warwickshire UK we think that in releasing Windows 8 so quickly after Windows 7, Microsoft are rushing into the tablet market and forgetting their desktop users. They have tried to shoehorn tablet users and desktop users together. Whether this is a good move for Microsoft is yet to be seen.

The first thing to notice is the new user touch style interface, We cannot quite see the point in having this new interface if you do not have a touch screen. Most people probably will not have a touch screen and will either be forced to upgrade their hardware in order to see the full benefits of Windows 8.

This begs the question Why did Microsoft not create a version for touchscreens and a version for traditional desktop users. Most corporate customers are probably not going to go to the expense of giving all their users touch screens, so soon after upgrading to Windows 7.

The boxes, sorry "tiles" on the front screen are great for touchscreen users but pretty meaningless if you use a conventional mouse. The main thing to remember is that the Windows key will always return you to this screen, while the desktop tile will take you to the familiar desktop.

FRESH WINDOWS 8 INSTALLATION

When Windows 8 is first installed you are forced to login using an email address although you can revert back to a local user account afterwards. Why this would be is anyone's guess and seems pretty pointless.

It also appears that you cannot import a user account form your old machine. You are forced to create a new one from scratch.

Some people are saying that the new interface is designed for non computer literate people. If you have been using Windows for years this might come as a bit of a shock to your system.

Once again Microsoft have hidden things like the control panel and the shutdown options. Touching or clicking the far right corner of the screen brings up a "settings" menu from where you then have to click "Power" and then "Shutdown". Alternatively you could use "ALT + F4" or the "Windows key+ I"

It's far too early to say how successful Windows 8 will be except to say that it might not run on some older processors

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Saturday 13 October 2012

BBC Watchdog Highlight Rogue Computer Repair Service Companies

Rogue Computer Repair Companies

Kenilworth Computer Repairs Mobile Computer Maintenance, Repair, and I.T Desktop Support Services for Kenilworth, Warwick, Royal Leamington Spa, Rugby, Stratford on Avon, Coventry, Solihull and environs.

Last night BBC Watchdog broadcast a report within it's Rogue Traders segment. This was about a company based in Birmingham that used several ficticious names to gain a presence in all areas of the country. Further the featured company also thought that it was perfectly OK for their directors to have ficticious names too and also to charge whatever they liked for a computer repair.

This company used "field engineers" throughout the UK to in essence work for them on a minimum wage basis. This is not the only company that appears to work in this way. We know of several others too !

With Computer Solutions and their Rapid Response Service you will always know exactly who you are dealing with, where they are and you'll always have a general indication of the price before they take on any PC repair.

We do have one or two issues with the report, notably the "Forensic I.T Expert" appeared to be doctoring a P.C that used an IDE type of hard drive. These are now obsolete and have not been easily available for some time.

Most computers up to about five years of age are more likely to have SATA hard drives installed. These do not need to have a jumper connected since you can ONLY connect ONE SATA hard drive to ONE SATA port.

Although the experiment was conducted well the technology used to conduct the experiment was vastly out of date and not relevant.

It was also suggested that a "hard drive could be picked up for under £30.00". This is only likely to be true for the SATA variety, IDE hard drives are going to be vastly more expensive because smaller numbers are being manufactured and they have been superseded.

The report does make interesting watching though and will be broadcast again on the 17th October 2012 at 01:30.

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Sunday 30 September 2012

Choosing a Graphics Card

Graphics cards have come a long way in recent years. There are basically two types of graphics card or video hardware. These are the 'on board' video card and the 'add in' video card.

With the relentless push to provide ever more functionality at an ever cheaper price, manufacturers decided to incorporate a video card on the motherboard itself, although the long term reliability of these has been somewhat questionable on the cheaper motherboards in recent years.

For the average user who may just be surfing the Internet or doing a bit of Word Processing, a built in video card will suffice. Motherboards of this design use some of the main system memory as graphics memory.

The advantage of this design is that no extra memory chips are required on the motherboard thereby reducing the cost of manufacture.

The disadvantage of this design is that normal memory runs more slowly than dedicated greaphics memory, so don't expect blistering graphics performance from an onboard video card.

Generally speaking onboard video memory is usually user selectable via a jumper or BIOS setting in the range of 64Mb - 256Mb.

Power computer users, designers and hardened gaming addicts will almost always opt for one or more add on video cards and there really are a multitude to choose from. A graphics card can range from a few tens to several hundreds of pounds, depending on use

These days all video cards utilise the PCI Express bus connector, present on all modern motherboards. Motherboards now no longer have ISA, AGP or PCI sockets at all. The 'PCIe' video bus is the current de-facto standard for the connection of graphics cards and several motherbaords have two such sockets which can be used together with two graphics cards if desired.

Graphics processors and graphics memory has evolved at a much faster rate than normal memory. Each new generation of graphics memory doubles the data rate of the previous one. Currently we are on DDR5 for graphics memory speed, while normal system memory is at DDR3. The more graphics memory available to a system and the faster the graphics processor, the better results it will produce. This takes advantage of the growth in the gaming market and the ever increasing complexity in gaming software.

Nearly all add in video cards will feature a DVI socket and/or a VGA socket and/or an adapter for backward compatibility. Some of the higher end cards will also include High Definition HDMI sockets too.

Since Kenilworth Computer Repairs in Warwickshire are completely independent they can advise on what is best for you, depending on what you are planning to use your computer for.

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Sunday 9 September 2012

Laptop Care And Maintenance

One problem that seems to be occurring with all laptops these days is that sudden failure for no apparent reason whatsoever. Yesterday the laptop was fine and today it isn't. There is no display even though the machine appears to be powering up okay.

Kenilworth Computer Solutions of Warwickshire would like to let you in on a little secret. Eventually this will happen to all laptops and the reason is simple.

Over time dust, the biggest enemy of every piece of electronic equipment, will collect on the heatsink and fan inside the laptop. This will reduce the heatsink's ability to cool the laptop properly. It will also cause the motherboard to become hotter than it would otherwise do so, during normal use. Whilst the main processor can usually cope with the additional heat from a dirty cooling system, quite often the graphics processor or GPU will not.

This will cause the connections between the graphics chip and the board to become stressed with many on off power cycles. Eventually the connections will stress and then break leading to no display or a highly distorted display.

This was the case with many nVidia and ATI graphics processors purchased after about 2006. This problem has been documented extensively elsewhere and dates from the time that lead was removed from the soldering process, during manufacture, on health grounds.

nVidia were the first to admit that there was a "manufacturing problem" back in 2007, although trying to get a refund out of Curry's, Dixons or PC-World is not going to be easy, although not impossible either. Check the Sale of Goods Act if this sort of fault occurs within the guarantee or extended guarantee period.

You do not have to accept a repair you are entitled to a new unit if this is the case. The The goods sold should be "fit for purpose" for which they are sold.

While not expensive, there are specialist services who can reconnect the graphics chip to the board. This is highly specialised work and is often called "reballing" or "reflowing". If carried out correctly a good result can be obtained and the laptop will continue to work for many years.

Most laptop repair shops will usually tell you that you need a new motherboard and will not even bother enquiring about a "specialist repair" as they do not appear to know much about it. They would be happier selling you a new laptop for a tiny profit rather than doing the job properly.

Computer Solutions can provide an external reflow of reballing service, once we have diagnosed that this is indeed the problem.

However a better way of approaching this situation is to wait until the guarantee on the laptop is due to end and then book the laptop in with Kenilworth Computer Solutions for a thorough clean out and general service. This will prevent or at least delay the problem occurring in the first place.

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Monday 3 September 2012

The Future Is The Mobile Website

Today Computer Solutions would like to talk about where website design is going. In recent years there has been a rise in the number of Smartphones and Tablets sold in the UK, with sales of traditional desktop and laptop computers declining as a result.

Where is this all leading to ? It's true that these days people are working harder and longer to get their message across to you the public, who are of course potential consumers. It is also true that when a potential customer is looking for a product or service they want that information straight away and they want to act of that information NOW !

If a potential customer has to spend ages either waiting for your normal website to load on their Smartphone or has to work out how to use it once it has loaded then that is a potential customer lost. They will simply go elsewhere. The adage here is that 'less is quite often more'.

Big business has already seen the potential of the mobile website. Most high street names now have a well designed mobile user website experience. The main difference between a normal desktop website and a mobile website is that the mobile website is a very highly streamlined version of their main desktop website. It has all the relevant information that a consumer could want at their fingertips.

There are a few cheap website conversion packages, that will take a normal desktop website and convert it to display correctly on a Smartphone. We've looked at many of them and nearly all of them fall way short of what we would expect.

All of these 'conversions' suffer from a very poor user experience. They are generally badly thought out with a poor layout. The results are often not very good, they are confusing, cluttered and generally off-putting for a potential customer to use.

Computer Solutions have teamed up with Smart Web Apps of Coventry to bring you an Innovative Mobile Website Solution. A Mobile Website should be clean, intuitive, fun to use with just the information a potential consumer would want in an instant. A Mobile Website should also have some degree of user interraction. In other words the Mobile Website should actually "DO" something.

This is exactly what Smart Web Apps specialize in. In the last 18 months alone they have secured several major clients in the Property, Legal and Accounting sectors.

Call Paul now at Smart Web Apps on

0844 496 2847 to discuss your Mobile Website requirements further.

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Thursday 23 August 2012

Is Your System Builder Doing Things Correctly ?

Is your System Builder Doing Things Correctly ?

This week Computer Solutions would like to draw your attention to small scale system builders. The vast majority of which, including ourselves are doing things correctly in terms of Microsoft software licensing etc.

Today Computer Solutions were called out to a regular customer of ours in Baginton, near Coventry. The customer had had his system built for him about two years ago and it is based on an Intel Dual Core G620 processor. This is an entry level system.

Recently there had been a series of regular power cuts in the Baginton area and this had caused some errors on the computer's hard drive, preventing it from starting up correctly. The machine was installed with Windows 7 Ultimate, although it was not connected to a domain and was just used for normal everyday work.

We had previously mentioned to the customer in the past that the computer did not appear to have a licence sticker on the machine at all. This is usually located on the top or the side of the machine and indicates that an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) software licence had been supplied with the machine.

In other words the customer has paid for a licence to use the Microsoft Operating System, when they purchased the machine. Small scale builders should supply both a disk and a licence which is attached to the machine at the time of the build. However there are a few who for whatever reason do not follow the rules.

Initially the machine could not be restored using the built in system recovery tools, although we did manage to resolve this.

Closer inspection revealed that the software fitted could well have been a counterfeit version as it did not appear to have been activated. Activation is the process of letting the Mictrosoft Licensing Server know about the new installation.

It appears that there is or was a 'hack' which allowed Windows 7 to be used without being activated. Normally activation should take place automatically once the machine goes online.

We think the company responsible for this is called Communikom, who were previously fined several thousand pounds by Microsoft for doing this previously. They have since fled to Spain and do not appear to be contactable. Our advice, should they return is to steer well clear of them. We've seen a couple of installations by them and this one seemed to bear many of their hallmarks.

The customer had no option but to purchase a valid licence for Windows 7 Ultimate from Microsoft costing £229.00, plus our time for putting things right and registering the software with the new licence correctly.

So if you are thinking of having a system built to your own custom specification please remember to ask for the licence sticker and software reinstallation disk as it will save you a lot of money later on, should you need to reinstall the Operating System.

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Thursday 16 August 2012

Beware of the UKASH Computer Virus Infection

Beware of the UKASH Virus !

The UKASH Virus

This week Computer Solutions thought that we'd make you aware of a computer virus infection which seems to be on the increase once again.

In the past ten days Computer Solutions have received several telephone calls about this particularly nasty computer infection. Most antivirus software does not pick it up because technically it IS NOT a virus as such. It could be described more accurately as "Ransomeware" The past fortnight has seen us repair two machines wit this infection

However the infection is nasty because it seems to attach itself to innocent websites. Once your computer is infected, the virus seems to know that you are trying to remove it and it simply reinstalls itself. It's processes embed themselves in the computer's registry and this makes it particularly difficult to remove, unless the registry is fixed first.

What The UKASH Infection And Its Variants Do.

This virus will lock your computer and display a message supposedly from a Police force indicating that you need to pay a £100 fine in order to get your computer unlocked. Indeed we have had reports from customers who have been taken in by this and in their frustration have telephoned the Police, only to be told that it is nothing to do with them.

It would appear that this virus infects both XP and Vista based laptops and desktops. It also on occasion damages wireless connection files. The drivers required for correct installation of such devices then have to be reinstalled once the virus has been removed.

We have not had any reports of the virus attacking a Windows 7 based machine as yet, but no doubt it won't be too long before we do !

Computer Solutions have found a way remove this computer infection. In fact we have a customer visiting this evening 16th Aug '12 with just this problem.

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Thursday 9 August 2012

Why Password Protection Is Important.

Password Protection

As you may or may not know Computer Solutions are often hired in to carry out expert work in the workshops of other local computer companies. We are always surprised at the number of laptops that arrive with absolutely no password protection whatsoever, as a case earlier this week demonstrated perfectly.

Computer Solutions were called out to the Mitchell Family in Claverdon, nr Warwick as the Son's father was concerned that his Son's new girlfriend seemed to somehow know everything about the Son's movements all of the time.

The father was worried that the Son's girlfriend may have put some sort of "keylogging" software, on the laptop and called us in to check. Keyloggers are small programs which record the keys that you press and store them in a file for retrieval later.

Quite often they are used in the creation of malware. If you did not know about them, you would not know they were no your machine.

We did ot find anything suspicious on the laptop but it was fairly obvious as too why it was very easy to track the Son's movements.

Firstly there was no password on the laptop at all and secondly the default user account was set as an "Administrator", giving anyone access to anything on the whole machine. It is surprising how many people set administrator accounts, without realizing the consequences of doing so.

In the majority of 'home user' cases there is no need to be an administrator all of the time. Of course there are times when 'administrator rights' are necessary but most of the time 'standard user rights' will suffice and it affords some protection.

The other problem with this laptop is that it was easy for this person to track the Son's movements as he had saved all his website logins in Firefox and Internet Explorer and more worryingly had used the same password on each one. This is probably the most common mistake.

Why not just store the different passwords in a cheap very low value mobile phone from eBay and keep it with you ? That way, being a cheap phone, it won't be much value to a thief but it will be of great value to you !

We managed to set a particularly difficult password on this laptop and advised accordingly.

We also set up a second account for the Son's partner so she would have no need to be logged into his account at all.

To change user account settings, click start, click control panel and click users or user accounts and follow the directions from there.

Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks

Kenilworth Computer Repairs News mobile PC repair service Kenilworth FoxPro or Visual FoxPro language Testimonials Stratford,Warwick Computer Repair Services computer repair service.Solihull Home Links Computer Services Rugby Operating Systems Areas covered P.C Maintenance Email Us Coventry Where are we?Click here to download your FREE Windows 7 Boot Disks Upgrade or New?Leamington Spa Tweet Hardware & Software Computer Repairs www.kenilworthcomputerrepairs.com

Kenilworth Computer Repairs

Monday 3 December 2012

PC Deals from Computer Solutions

Treat yourself to a new PC this Christmas. Fantastic Deals from Computer Solutions !

Monday 5 November 2012

Windows 8 Reviewed

Windows 8 Reviewed

Saturday 13 October 2012

BBC Watchdog Highlight Rogue Computer Repair Service Companies

Rogue Computer Repair Companies

Kenilworth Computer Repairs Mobile Computer Maintenance, Repair, and I.T Desktop Support Services for Kenilworth, Warwick, Royal Leamington Spa, Rugby, Stratford on Avon, Coventry, Solihull and environs.

Sunday 30 September 2012

Choosing a Graphics Card

Choosing a Graphics Card

Sunday 9 September 2012

Laptop Care And Maintenance

Laptop Care And Maintenance

Monday 3 September 2012

The Future Is The Mobile Website

The Future Is The Mobile Website

Thursday 23 August 2012

Is Your System Builder Doing Things Correctly ?

Is your System Builder Doing Things Correctly ?

Thursday 16 August 2012

Beware of the UKASH Computer Virus Infection

Beware of the UKASH Virus !

The UKASH Virus

What The UKASH Infection And Its Variants Do.

Thursday 9 August 2012

Why Password Protection Is Important.

Why Password Protection Is Important.

Password Protection

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