Other Tools

[netmanrob]

Hi Guys,

I am in the process of transitioning from a pc-guru for friends and family into a full-blown repair shop.  PC Doctor v6 was a major step in that direction.  Last week I tested a stack of bone-yard notebooks and several of them tested as having hard drive issues.  My initial response would have been to purchase new hard drives, but an IT friend suggested I look into a program called HDD Regenerator that can detect and repair bad sectors, much like the original Norton Disk Doctor did with DOS machines.  Remember RLL drives Yikes!!

Anyway, my question is; aside from stumbling around and trial-and-error what other tools would be helpful to a fledgling repair guy?

I know about Hiren's Boot CD, but I'm afraid of it.  First of all, it is not for sale, only freeware.  I looked at the list of apps it includes and thought "there is no way this can be freeware, it has Partition Magic, Norton Ghost and lots of other commercial apps".  So I sent Hiren an inquiry and his reply was: "the CD contains some unlicensed commercial software.  Using unlicensed software is illegal".

Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Rob

[fwilson]

Rob,

First let me thank you for being a PC-Doctor customer and commend you on your decision to move into the PC repair field.

Freeware is cool, as long as you are not giving someone else’s property away, which doesn’t seem to be the case with the Boot CD you mentioned.  People work hard to create good software and taking it is not good.  You wouldn’t want someone to have you fix their computer and not pay you, the same goes for software vendors.

All of that being said let’s talk about the concept of a “hard drive regenerator”.  A hard drive is a mechanical thing, spinning platters and flying heads.  The most likely cause of a drive failing is the small head crashes that occur when a system is dropped or bumped hard.  This creates small imperfections on the surface of the platter that render these areas no longer able to store data.  The bad sectors can be remapped and avoided; DOS chkdsk can do that for you.  The real problem is that once this begins to happen drives tend to start eating themselves.  The oxide scraped from the platter starts flying around inside the drive getting between the heads and platter creating more bad spots and more oxide particles getting worse, faster over time.

It depends on what the bone-yard notebooks are going to be used for and by whom.  If they are going to be resold I would buy new drives.  The time it takes to install the OS, patch, configure and test could all be wasted if the drive is to far gone.  Worse yet, it may get out in the field and die in a month. Now you have to do it all over again and have an unhappy customer.

If they are for your own use or for friends and everyone understands the risks that’s a different story.

-Fred

[colinc]

Here are a few "Other Tools" that I keep in my toolkit, besides PC-Doctor, of course... 

Knoppix 5.1.1 or newer - for many different offline maintenance tasks (eg. virus scanning, data backup from a failing disc, registry repair, repairing botched Linux installs) = FREE
http://www.knoppix.net/

XP/NT Password Recovery Disc - saved me many times = FREE
http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Acronis True Image - always make an image before you mess with anything! = NOT FREE!
http://www.acronis.com/

DBAN - for fully nuking a drive = FREE
http://www.dban.org/

Bootable USB key with XP installed - use similarly to the Knoppix disc, for non-Linux folks = NOT FREE! (need XP license)
http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8

Gparted Live CD - a truly free partitioning tool that actually works! = FREE
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Active File Recovery Professional - recover deleted files from Windows systems = NOT FREE!
http://www.file-recovery.net/

PE Builder - create custom PE images = FREE** (but you need to license the PE image)
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

BartPE - prebuilt alternative to creating your own PE images - some licensing issues may exist, depending on the plugins you configure, but it is implied that you already have licenses for those = FREE**
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Learn how to view and interpret a Windows minidump (ie. BSOD) = FREE
http://www.computingsuccesssecrets.com/computer-repair/how-to-view-a-minidump/

HiJackThis - find those pesky browser hijackers = FREE
http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html

Malwarebytes - removes most common malware, even with the trial = FREE (Trial Edition)
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

CCleaner - cleanup temp file gunk on Windows machines = FREE
http://www.ccleaner.com/


Ideally, since the majority of systems you will encounter are running Windows: you want a bootable USB key/drive with XP and the following tools installed, so you can work on ailing Windows systems. These will help you debug software issues or save a bit of data on a dying drive.
Acronis, Active File Recovery Professional, minidump tools and symbols, HiJackThis, Malwarebytes, CCleaner

Of course, there are plenty of other/alternate tools out there, but these are a few that I find myself using more often than others.

And naturally, these are only my personal recommendations, and should not be interpreted as an endorsement by PC-Doctor, for any of the above tools.

Have fun!!!