Home PC - an appeal for help

[Wapping]

Does anyone out there know of a reliable person (London area) who will (for a reasonable fee) fix PCs, preferably through an ‘At home’ visit?

My PC has gone into a deep sulk since we tried to load the software etc. for my daughter’s Ipod Nano, resulting in tears (hers not mine, yet). I have tried re-loading, restarting, system re-set, kicking, begging all to no avail.

I would also like to get a wireless system up and running where AOL have been no help, along with a good general health check on my PC / Laptop.

If anyone wants the job or knows of someone who might, please could they PM me.

Many thanks,

Richard Nash

 

[Wapping]

Anyone there?

 

[ianf]

Missed this the first time round...

1. what's the pc doing exactly since you installed itunes?

2. google for aol and wireless. I think it's a no-no, there was another post about this over the last couple of days.

 

[centaur]

AOL is perfectly capable of working with a wireless router/modem and is doing so in many areas currently. Most current routers have a specific setup screen for AOL since its requirements are very slightly different from most others, but the setup is every bit as easy to manage.
Sorry, can't help with the 'hands-on' help in the London area, but maybe by PM or phone.

 

[Wapping]

Missed this the first time round...

1. what's the pc doing exactly since you installed itunes?

2. google for aol and wireless. I think it's a no-no, there was another post about this over the last couple of days.

I am no PC whiz but here goes:

Loaded, or I think I loaded, the Nano driver, Itunes, Ipod and a new version of QuickTime from the CD that came with the new Nano, all the shortcuts appeared on the Desktop and were listed in Start / All Programmes. Restarted computer.

Copied a music CD into the Ipod Library, all OK.

Connected Nano, PC refused point blank to recognise it.

Reloaded the CD and overwrote the existing programmes. Restarted PC. Still wouldn't recognise the Nano.

Deleted all the new programmes, wound the clock back and started again. CD now refuses to complete installation.

I think the problem revolves around the QuickTime software, but that doesn't explain why the PC refuses to recognise the Nano. From a link from Microsoft to Apple I picked up a help telling me that installation problems can occurre with multiple versions of QuickTime. Go to Start / Add / Remove and remove QuickTime. Tried this but was told that the file (or whatever it's called) wasn't at the specified location. Now up sh*t creek. Whilst I don't mind getting my hands dirty in my motorbikes internals I am stumped with computers.

This is probably the start of my concerns.

I am not sure that my anti-virus is running, seems to have vanished.

I get messages that I am running out of virtual memory, whatever that is. This predates the Ipod fun and games.

The PC has become a bit unstable, shuts down following a Windows has encountered a problem and is shutting down, memory dump, re-start safe mode etc. All mumbo-jumbo. This predates the Ipod fiasco,

I'm no Luddite and XP is usually pretty friendly until it throws you something you really do not understand.

I would love to get wireless running on AOL. This would mean my daughter can do her homework etc. whilst I use the laptop downstairs. My chum's is now running OK on AOL despite a few initial hiccoughs, so it can't be that bad.

All in all I would just like someone, who knows what they are doing to fix the thing, tidy it all up and get the wireless up and running. If it was a car I could probably do it all myself and / or find a competent mechanic to help with the bits I couldn't do, pay him and away we go...nothing so simple seems to exist for PCs yet there are millions around. I have no great faith in PC World etal, who just seem to sell boxes of kit and / or do not listen to the real problem. I just would like to deal with someone sensible, preferably who can come to my house, spend a few happy hours, get decently paid and fix it. It's an expensive PC and an expensive laptop, so it's worth paying someone a decent fair price to work on them.

Sorry if this has now turned into a rant but if anyone knows someone who can help there is definitely a in it for them.

Richard

 

[Wapping]

AOL is perfectly capable of working with a wireless router/modem and is doing so in many areas currently. Most current routers have a specific setup screen for AOL since its requirements are very slightly different from most others, but the setup is every bit as easy to manage.
Sorry, can't help with the 'hands-on' help in the London area, but maybe by PM or phone.

Thanks for your post. I too have seen it working on AOL. I simply lack the knowledge to install it properly. More truthfuly I lack the knowledge to sort it out if it doesn't load straight from the box. This is because I do not understand much of the terminology / buzz words used and / or when the image on the screen doesn't match the instruction in the handbook. This is not meant a side-swipe at so called 'computer nerds' (I take my hat off to them) and would gladly pay one of them a fair fee to help me out. Just as I would try to help someone needing reinsure a PML bust excess layer with two free reinstatements on a policy with a three year LTA but excluding nat. cat. (or some similar reinsurance mumbo-jumbo) if asked.

 

[Mick_rw]

May Help...

I had a friend who brought his son an IPOD Shuffle, which had similar problems to what you are describing, it turned out to be the USB1 not quite manageing to work with the shuffle, tried it on my USB2 and it worked perfectly. The way we got round it was to connect USB2 hub to his PC, with it's own power supply and it worked ok. I am assuming the NANO is USB

 

[ianf]

There's two problems really here.

1. The nano not being recognised.

Was it a brand new one? It could be faulty or have a faulty cable? Or the usb port is bad? Can you eliminate these easily round a mates/use their ipod on your install.

2. The unstable p.c. Any chance you can note down the stop code next time, and the 4 long numbers underneath. They're in base 16, so can have 0-F in each digit. The stop code will be something like 000000NN where NN is some pair of 0-A digits. I do this stuff all day long, and it's usually easy to find out what's gone wrong from the dump. I'll pm you an email address you can send it to me at (find memory.dmp and send it to a compressed file via a right click first). Hopefully it'll be quite small zipped up. I can get the stopcode out of the dump from the last crash.

Things like AV stopping and then running out of v.m. kind of point to virus/malware behaviour, so run all the adaware/spybot stuff. Go to your AV suppliers website and see if you can run it from the command prompt in safe mode to detect viruses that disable AV services.

If you were in West London I'd take you up on coming round to have a look, but I don't fancy the trip after work. (After 8 hrs of sorting out this stuff, last thing you want to do is some more) These sorts of jobs also tend to have no reliable time to fix so it's hard to estimate to charge for it, and it's not worth taking a day off for 'cos it'd cost more than the pc.

Can it wait until the weekend? The AOL thing, what make and model of wireless router were you thinking of, and what exactly is the AOL boradband product you have?

 

[Wapping]

Many thanks to all that have replied via this thread and PMs. A good bunch one-and-all like all GSers!

A wise solution may well be in hand from Judge, once he has negotiated the horrors of the Blackwall Tunnel!

I owe each of you a and will be happy to pay the debt should our paths ever cross.

Cheers and best wishes for 2006 - mine's looking brighter already!