How to Fix Your Own Computer, Required Tools

Please read our Terms and Conditions of Use.

by fliptop 04/15/2010

At IGO, we fix a lot of computers that have a wide variety of problems. During the next few weeks I'll be sharing with you the tips and tricks I've honed over the years with the hope it will help guide you through your own repairs. These techniques are generally not platform specific; a bad motherboard that's preventing your computer from turning on won't care if you have Windows or Linux installed. However, since we don't see many Apple products, most of the procedures will apply only to the PC platform.

Before we get started, let's go over the tools (both hardware and software) that I use and consider a bare minimum of what's required to fix most any problem.

Hardware Tools

• Screwdrivers - phillips and flat-head
• Needlenose Pliers
• Dykes (diagonal side-cutting pliers, for snipping wire, zip ties, etc.)
• Magnifying glass
• Volt-ohm meter (not necessary, but handy when troubleshooting power supply issues)

Software Tools

Some software tools are better used when burned to a CD, others can simply be stored on a USB flash drive. All of these tools are available for free.

• MalwareBytes - An absolutely essential tool for removing malware from badly infected Windows systems. Can be installed and used in Safe Mode.
• SUPER Anti-Spyware - A great tool for scanning and removing spyware and browser cookies from Windows systems.
• Avast! Anti-virus - I've used and recommended many different free anti-virus tools over the years, and in my opinion Avast! has them all beat. The free version installs easily, includes automatic updates, and provides a very convenient "boot-scan" utility that will scan your hard drive for viruses before it boots to Windows. It does require you to register the product every year, but it's a small price to pay for a free tool that works this well.
• Norton Removal Tool - I'm always scratching my head wondering why so many people buy anti-virus software from Norton when the free tools are just as good or better. I've found Norton's anti-virus products to be bloated and kludgy, and have fixed many, many computers that were infested with spyware, malware and viruses that were running various versions of Norton's products. Sometimes, when removing Norton it will botch the uninstallation and leave you with a computer that will ping and do DNS lookups, but be unable to browse the Web. This tool fixes that problem. It is probably easiest to find this tool by doing a google search.
• Microsoft Windows Installer Cleanup Utility - Badly infected Windows systems may have malware that messes up your "Add/Remove Programs" (Windows XP) or "Programs and Files" (Windows Vista/7) utility. If you're having problems uninstalling crapware using these utilities, the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility can sometimes help.
• .NET Cleanup Tool - If you're using Quickbooks or other applications that rely heavily on the .NET framework, this tool will fix problems caused when the .NET updates from Windows Update won't install.
• The Ultimate Boot CD - A great collection of free tools that include diagnostics, disk cloning, hardware identification, filesystem managers and other essential utilities. This should be burned to a CD.
• SeaTools for DOS - Seagate provides a useful tool for diagnosing hard drives. Although a version of this is included on the Ultimate Boot CD, we recommend having this DOS utility burned to a separate CD.
• Gnome Partition Editor - The GParted application enables you to change the partition organization on a disk device while preserving the contents of the partitions. Useful after cloning a hard drive to a larger capacity hard drive, and should be burned to a CD.
• Ubuntu - Many times a Windows system becomes so badly infected with viruses, malware and spyware it becomes essentially useless and a reinstallation is inevitable. Booting to an Ubuntu CD may make it possible to recover your important data before you reformat your hard drive.

Now that you've got your toolbox prepared, you're ready to start!

<<Back to Blog Index