Computer Service Part 1

"My hard drive died and needed to be replaced."

"The motherboard was bad and they put in a new one."

"My computer caught a virus and they said they would have to replace my hard drive."

These are the kinds of things I hear all the time from people who have just had their computer serviced. It makes me shudder when I think of the damage and loss that results, not from the original problem, but from the incompetence of many of the people servicing computers.

Hard drives do "die" and need to be replaced but it is a much rarer occurance than service technicians seem to diagnose.

Replacing the motherboard is often the easy solution to a "dead" computer. The real issue is often much simpler, though often harder to diagnose.

I've been around computers for a few years -- in fact, since the first personal computers were made -- both corporately and in the private sector, and I cannot think of even one instance where a hard drive was actually damaged by a virus.

I suspect that incompetence and "commission on sales" are the two most common driving factors leading computer service technicians to replace major parts in a malfunctioning computer. When a computer stops dead it is more likely a blown power supply than a motherboard or hard drive. Often it is as simple a problem as a loose connection. You should rarely have to replace, or even re-format, a hard drive.

Proper maintenance, including regular anti-virus and anti-spyware processes, hard drive defragmentation, and vacuuming the power supply fan, will go a long way to keeping your computer in good shape. Be sure the computer box is well ventilated. Sticking it between other things, and piling books and papers on top of it, is not the best procedure. There needs to be room around it to allow for the intake of fresh room-temperature air at the vents and to allow free flow of the exhaust from the fan. Computers need to be cooled. Blocked vents or a malfunctioning fan lead to over-heating and damage.