Showing posts with label Laptop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laptop. Show all posts
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Steps To Resolve Frustrating DLL Errors
Computers have been one of the most useful tools mankind has ever invented. From very large sized machines at the time of its introduction, computers have now become very compact and user friendly. This makes most computer users confident of using computers.
Unfortunately, the error reporting mechanism of computers has not evolved to become user friendly for amateur computer users. You still encounter many error messages which may appear like an alien language to you. These errors may cause frustration, anger or even panic if you are working on a tight deadline.
One such error which you are likely to encounter on a PC running the Windows operating system is a DLL error. If you have been using computers for some time now, you may have noticed error messages popping up on your machine informing you of a particular DLL error. A common user when facing such an error may panic and reboot their computer in the hope that the error may go away. However, it is better if you understand the cause of such errors and easy ways to resolve them.
DLL refers to Dynamic Link Library. DLL files are an important part of an application or program and are vital for their proper functioning. Also, at times you may have DLL files that are shared among more than one program. A DLL error may be caused due to one of the following reasons:
Unfortunately, the error reporting mechanism of computers has not evolved to become user friendly for amateur computer users. You still encounter many error messages which may appear like an alien language to you. These errors may cause frustration, anger or even panic if you are working on a tight deadline.
One such error which you are likely to encounter on a PC running the Windows operating system is a DLL error. If you have been using computers for some time now, you may have noticed error messages popping up on your machine informing you of a particular DLL error. A common user when facing such an error may panic and reboot their computer in the hope that the error may go away. However, it is better if you understand the cause of such errors and easy ways to resolve them.
DLL refers to Dynamic Link Library. DLL files are an important part of an application or program and are vital for their proper functioning. Also, at times you may have DLL files that are shared among more than one program. A DLL error may be caused due to one of the following reasons:
- Removal of an important DLL file by mistake.
- Attempt to install an application comprising a corrupt DLL file.
- Problems in your hard disk.
- New DLL files overwriting the old files that may be incompatible with your already existing programs.
- Infection by spyware or virus.
There are numerous ways to resolve DLL errors. Whenever your PC warns you of a DLL error, usually it displays the name of the specific DLL file such as xvidcore.dll, msvcr71.dll or msvcrt.dll that has become corrupt or has been deleted. You can note down the file name and perform a search for this DLL file on the internet. By downloading this file and replacing the old one, you may rectify the problem.
Another easy method to correct the DLL error may be to perform a system restore. Make sure to set the date of the system restore to the day before you started encountering this error. If the DLL error does not allow your PC to start, just restart your PC in Safe mode and start system restore.
Another easy method to correct the DLL error may be to perform a system restore. Make sure to set the date of the system restore to the day before you started encountering this error. If the DLL error does not allow your PC to start, just restart your PC in Safe mode and start system restore.
How To Clear Your Toshiba Bios Password
This Toshiba bios password removal process is meant for use on Toshiba laptops that you own or have had permission from the rightful owner to remove the password. If any of these processes are done incorrectly it may result in complete system failure or permanent system damage (you've been warned!).
Acer Bios Password Removal
If you need to remove your Acer bios password from your Travelmate 3290, then follow this guide.
Please note: This bypass procedure is similar for most Travelmate machines but it would be a good idea to consult a repair manual to check the exact details for your model first. Also, there are some basic precautions you should take when working on your laptop, have a quick look at some points to note in our general laptop repair guide.
Please note: This bypass procedure is similar for most Travelmate machines but it would be a good idea to consult a repair manual to check the exact details for your model first. Also, there are some basic precautions you should take when working on your laptop, have a quick look at some points to note in our general laptop repair guide.
How To Clear Your Bios Password
You might find you need to clear your bios password on your laptop if you have had the motherboard replaced or perhaps you've simply forgotten what your password is. A bios password is also often used as a hardware level security precaution, this is all good and well but if you need to bypass your password then the procedure can be difficult.
Laptop LCD Repair
If you're undertaking some laptop LCD repair, removing and replacing your screen means you are working with a very fragile and very expensive component.
Follow these steps carefully, the machine in the photos here is a Toshiba but the job is quite similar regardless of what brand machine you are working on.
Follow these steps carefully, the machine in the photos here is a Toshiba but the job is quite similar regardless of what brand machine you are working on.
How To Remove And Replace Your Laptop Hard Drive
This is a photo guide to assist you to remove and replace your laptop hard drive. In the photos here we are working on a current model Toshiba but the procedure will be similar on most laptops.
Firstly, locate the hard drive bay and remove the cover screw.
Remove the bay cover to reveal the HDD.
Gently disconnect the hard disk from its connector as shown.
Check to ensure the connector pins haven't been bent, if they have carefully bend them back into line with a small flat bladed screwdriver.
Remove the 4 screws from the harddrive bracket and take out the drive.To replace your laptop hard drive simply reverse the steps shown above.
How to Boot with CD Drive
CD drives that won't boot or devices that become inaccessible for no apparent reason is a common problem with laptops. There's obviously always a reason but why can vary significantly.
General hardware failure is often the cause but determining which piece of hardware it is isn’t always so black and white. A common misconception is that if your CD ROM is not recognized by your system that it's simply the CD ROM which is faulty, this isn’t always the case as laptops have fixed or board mounted connectors for these types of devices which include CD ROMs, modems, wifi cards, RAM or even the CPU.
These connectors often have fuses attached that can fail causing the hardware attached to them to lose connection from the system altogether as the connector is now dead. The device itself is in a lot of cases fine but often replaced unnecessarily.
In the situation of the connector itself being faulty you may have to replace the mainboard, a much bigger and more expensive problem to solve.
This issue can be identified by devices suddenly not being recognized by the bios, the next step to determine why your CD drive won't boot is to access your bios to fault find further. Refer to your laptop's user manual for instructions on how to do this.
Once you have accessed the bios on your machine you need to navigate through the various options to be able to view what devices the system actually recognizes as connected or active.
General hardware failure is often the cause but determining which piece of hardware it is isn’t always so black and white. A common misconception is that if your CD ROM is not recognized by your system that it's simply the CD ROM which is faulty, this isn’t always the case as laptops have fixed or board mounted connectors for these types of devices which include CD ROMs, modems, wifi cards, RAM or even the CPU.
These connectors often have fuses attached that can fail causing the hardware attached to them to lose connection from the system altogether as the connector is now dead. The device itself is in a lot of cases fine but often replaced unnecessarily.
In the situation of the connector itself being faulty you may have to replace the mainboard, a much bigger and more expensive problem to solve.
This issue can be identified by devices suddenly not being recognized by the bios, the next step to determine why your CD drive won't boot is to access your bios to fault find further. Refer to your laptop's user manual for instructions on how to do this.
Once you have accessed the bios on your machine you need to navigate through the various options to be able to view what devices the system actually recognizes as connected or active.
How To Take Your Laptop Apart
Laptop Disassembly Procedure.
This is a guide on how to take your laptop apart, it's based on one particular model and won't tell you how to take your laptop apart exactly, it's meant to be used as a general guide on how to disassemble a laptop and should be used to get an understanding of how they're put together.
This page has step by step instructions with quite a few images, it may take a few seconds to load so please be patient.
This is a guide on how to take your laptop apart, it's based on one particular model and won't tell you how to take your laptop apart exactly, it's meant to be used as a general guide on how to disassemble a laptop and should be used to get an understanding of how they're put together.
This page has step by step instructions with quite a few images, it may take a few seconds to load so please be patient.
How To Test Your Notebook
On this page we've covered a few techniques to test your notebook for properly functioning components.
Optical Drive
Not a lot of testing required here, most of the time they work or they don’t. In the case of cd burning issues, ensure you try different media if you are having problems with disc’s failing mid burn, reinstalling or using different burning software is a must as well.
If you have a removable drive always try and reseat the drive (eject and plug back in) this can often work, the drive may have moved in transit.
FDD drives:
Issues with floppy drives are often terminal and will 90% of the time result in replacing the entire drive, more often faults with these drives are mechanical ones which causes the drive to no longer read discs.
Network and Modem:
To test your notebook for internal network and modem issues is quite simple. For modems just ensure everything is connected properly and you have an available phone line. Use Windows own HyperTerminal (Start/Programs/Accessories/Communications) to create a test dialup to your cell phone or additional phone line. If this still fails, uninstall and then reinstall the modem from Device Manager.
Most of the notebook modems are a separate little module that in most cases is easily replaced if after all this testing you still have no luck.
Network cards are generally a part of modern day motherboards so if yours is faulty you may want to look at a PCMCIA network card as a cheaper option.
Sound issues:
If have a problem with your laptop's sound system there are a couple of ways to test your notebook to determine if it is indeed the sound chipset which is faulty.
Not a lot of testing required here, most of the time they work or they don’t. In the case of cd burning issues, ensure you try different media if you are having problems with disc’s failing mid burn, reinstalling or using different burning software is a must as well.
If you have a removable drive always try and reseat the drive (eject and plug back in) this can often work, the drive may have moved in transit.
FDD drives:
Issues with floppy drives are often terminal and will 90% of the time result in replacing the entire drive, more often faults with these drives are mechanical ones which causes the drive to no longer read discs.
Network and Modem:
To test your notebook for internal network and modem issues is quite simple. For modems just ensure everything is connected properly and you have an available phone line. Use Windows own HyperTerminal (Start/Programs/Accessories/Communications) to create a test dialup to your cell phone or additional phone line. If this still fails, uninstall and then reinstall the modem from Device Manager.
Most of the notebook modems are a separate little module that in most cases is easily replaced if after all this testing you still have no luck.
Network cards are generally a part of modern day motherboards so if yours is faulty you may want to look at a PCMCIA network card as a cheaper option.
Sound issues:
If have a problem with your laptop's sound system there are a couple of ways to test your notebook to determine if it is indeed the sound chipset which is faulty.
Laptop MotherBoard Repair And Diagnosis
All we can say about laptop motherboard repair is that unless you have some of the latest diagnostic equipment, a test jig, ESD setup workshop, an array of tools, digital multi meters and an oscilloscope then don’t think you can narrow down your fault diagnosis to the exact component that is causing your laptop to misbehave... nobody has that much time.
What I can also say is that even your local authorised repair centre for all the brand name laptops don’t go to this much trouble either. I have personally been present for a number of different manufacturers service calls and witnessed how they operate.
What I can also say is that even your local authorised repair centre for all the brand name laptops don’t go to this much trouble either. I have personally been present for a number of different manufacturers service calls and witnessed how they operate.
How To Repair Your Laptop Power Plug
It's almost inevitable that you'll need to repair your laptop power plug if you own a Toshiba Satellite A70 unless you've already had the main board replaced in which Toshiba have applied a well overdue modification similar to what you’ll see here.
The DC jacks on these units are weakened over time with general use and become unstable and loose, in some cases detaching themselves from the main board altogether.
The DC jacks on these units are weakened over time with general use and become unstable and loose, in some cases detaching themselves from the main board altogether.
Laptop Headphone Jack Repair
Laptop headphone jack repair is a common repair job and can be the result of general wear and tear or a mishap with the jack, what happens a lot is that the headphones are inserted and the plug gets removed roughly or pulled to one side, accidently dislodging or damaging the headphone jack solder points.
Laptop Battery Life - Myths And Realities
Laptop battery life is a topic that results in more support calls than any other topic, manufacturers world wide jump would for joy if they could put to rest the myth and expectations around the laptop battery life of their machines. But it is my opinion that this resolve needs to begin with the manufacturers themselves.
Need To Repair Your Laptop Battery?
OK, bad news first. There isn't much you can do to repair your laptop battery. There are companies that claim they can do what they call repacking or reconditioning but what you will find is the end result may not be worth the money spent on this service, not to mention that laptop manufacturers don’t recommend the practice.
How To Format Your Laptop's Hard Drive
Deciding to format your laptop's hard drive is the best way to give your machine back that new car smell and get rid of all those little bugs the laptop has picked up through months of internet browsing and random installs of freeware.
Performing such a task on modern laptops is easy. Most laptop vendors supply either a set of recovery CD’s with the machine or the laptop itself has a recovery partition on the HDD preinstalled.
Some laptops require you to make a set of recovery cd's using a utility on the machine (an important thing to put on your to do list when setting up a new laptop!).
Once again all vendors have their own method of initialising the recovery or reformat process but here are some examples.
Performing such a task on modern laptops is easy. Most laptop vendors supply either a set of recovery CD’s with the machine or the laptop itself has a recovery partition on the HDD preinstalled.
Some laptops require you to make a set of recovery cd's using a utility on the machine (an important thing to put on your to do list when setting up a new laptop!).
Once again all vendors have their own method of initialising the recovery or reformat process but here are some examples.
- Some Toshiba notebooks have bootable recovery CD’s, holding down the "C" key from boot will do it.
- Some HP’s use "F11" on boot to start the process. Others use bootable CD’s.
- Most Acers have a bootable CD, then an OS CD and a files and drivers disc.
- IBM also uses the bootable CD method.
Refer to the owners manual for the particular method for your notebook.
Reformatting your laptop will erase data on the hard drive so ensure you backup first. Advise anybody working on or repairing your laptop not to format the HDD during the repair unless it is backed up first, this happens all too often. It's a good policy to always backup your machine before having any sort of repair done.
Laptop Data Recovery
Laptop data recovery may be something you need to undertake if your laptop won't boot from the drive or makes a loud ticking or grinding noise, not a lot can be done apart from replacing the laptop hard drive entirely.
Your options here are limited and generally involves attempting some data recovery if you need to retrieve something off the faulty drive.
Your options here are limited and generally involves attempting some data recovery if you need to retrieve something off the faulty drive.
Hard drive replacement for your laptop
A hard drive replacement for your laptop will be a common issue that will continue to plague the laptop owners and operators of the world until the laptop hard drive technology moves to solid state drives, as long as there are moving parts inside that harddisk we will have to put up with head crashes and bad sectors. That’s not to say that any new technology won't have a whole new array of unseen or even unheard of errors and problems.. not giving you a lot of confidence in your data storage am I.
I have one word of advice.. BACKUPS.
OK, back to the info…
A hard drive replacement for your laptop is generally one of the easier jobs to do yourself unless you have one of the makes and models of laptop that doesn’t provide easy access to the harddisk, hiding it away under the palm rest or worse still mounting it to the main board. Luckily there are not a lot of these and most of the laptop makers now recognise the need to have access to the drive for various reasons.
Replacing a drive is simple.. generally you can remove 1 screw from the HDD cavity or enclosure and the drive can be removed by sliding it out.
Once the harddisk is removed it will have some sort of aluminium case or frame that it screws into which will need to be removed and fitted to the new drive. This step is essential to your laptop hard drive repair or the drive won't slide back in properly and possibly bend the pins if you try and insert it.. this is bad.
I have one word of advice.. BACKUPS.
OK, back to the info…
A hard drive replacement for your laptop is generally one of the easier jobs to do yourself unless you have one of the makes and models of laptop that doesn’t provide easy access to the harddisk, hiding it away under the palm rest or worse still mounting it to the main board. Luckily there are not a lot of these and most of the laptop makers now recognise the need to have access to the drive for various reasons.
Replacing a drive is simple.. generally you can remove 1 screw from the HDD cavity or enclosure and the drive can be removed by sliding it out.
Once the harddisk is removed it will have some sort of aluminium case or frame that it screws into which will need to be removed and fitted to the new drive. This step is essential to your laptop hard drive repair or the drive won't slide back in properly and possibly bend the pins if you try and insert it.. this is bad.
Some drives have a HDD connector cover on the pins which also needs to be removed and put on the new drive. See below.
HDD with connector on a Toshiba Tecra 9000.
Be gentle when re-inserting the new drive, damage to the pins can be a painful affair. If you insert the drive and the laptop doesn’t boot try removing it and re-inserting as the pins may be misaligned.
Keep in mind too that new laptop hard drives are shipped un-partitioned and not formatted just the same as normal IDE drives, hopefully you still have your recovery CD’s that came with your laptop, if not don’t worry you can use a Windows CD to rebuild your laptop from scratch and then access the internet at some stage to download drivers specific to your laptop (generally available from the laptop manufacturer's website).
Be gentle when re-inserting the new drive, damage to the pins can be a painful affair. If you insert the drive and the laptop doesn’t boot try removing it and re-inserting as the pins may be misaligned.
Keep in mind too that new laptop hard drives are shipped un-partitioned and not formatted just the same as normal IDE drives, hopefully you still have your recovery CD’s that came with your laptop, if not don’t worry you can use a Windows CD to rebuild your laptop from scratch and then access the internet at some stage to download drivers specific to your laptop (generally available from the laptop manufacturer's website).
Laptop overheating?
Laptop Overheating Issues:
Does your laptop shutdown at random? Does it slow down during heavy operations? Do you need to wait 10 min. before you can start it up again? These are all the symptoms of a laptop overheating problem in or around the cooling system.
What needs to be remembered is that a lot of the current laptops on the market today are running specifications that traditionally were reserved for desktops. Some even contain desktop CPU’s and a kick ass cooling system to match. Take a look at the cooling modules in some of the current Toshiba notebooks.
Anyhow, in order for these CPU’s to perform they have to be kept as cool as possible so manufacturers like Toshiba, Compaq/HP and the like struggle with the limited space and power to do this, hence they have had some laptop overheating issues.
If your laptop does show some of the symptoms mentioned before here’s what you can do..
On the under side of a lot of the machines you can gain access to the CPU/cooling module compartment, be warned – when tinkering around near the CPU, electro static discharge may be your worst nightmare - be careful to control ESD. Once you have located where the fan is you will be able to see quite clearly if this is your issue.. take a look below.
1: Heat sink
2: Fan
The heat sink runs off to the right of this picture and sits on the CPU, you can see the copper pipe running to the CPU here (1).
The fan and the heat sink have a small gap in between them, this is where dust will be sucked into and will accumulate.
Does your laptop shutdown at random? Does it slow down during heavy operations? Do you need to wait 10 min. before you can start it up again? These are all the symptoms of a laptop overheating problem in or around the cooling system.
What needs to be remembered is that a lot of the current laptops on the market today are running specifications that traditionally were reserved for desktops. Some even contain desktop CPU’s and a kick ass cooling system to match. Take a look at the cooling modules in some of the current Toshiba notebooks.
Anyhow, in order for these CPU’s to perform they have to be kept as cool as possible so manufacturers like Toshiba, Compaq/HP and the like struggle with the limited space and power to do this, hence they have had some laptop overheating issues.
If your laptop does show some of the symptoms mentioned before here’s what you can do..
On the under side of a lot of the machines you can gain access to the CPU/cooling module compartment, be warned – when tinkering around near the CPU, electro static discharge may be your worst nightmare - be careful to control ESD. Once you have located where the fan is you will be able to see quite clearly if this is your issue.. take a look below.
1: Heat sink
2: Fan
The heat sink runs off to the right of this picture and sits on the CPU, you can see the copper pipe running to the CPU here (1).
The fan and the heat sink have a small gap in between them, this is where dust will be sucked into and will accumulate.
Cleaning Your Laptop Screen
A question asked by a lot of laptop owners is "What's the best way to go about cleaning your laptop screen?".
You'll find all sorts of different opinions on the subject, here's ours.
A few things to note..
You'll find all sorts of different opinions on the subject, here's ours.
A few things to note..
- Don’t use anything abrasive on the screen, either to clean it or to wipe with.
- Never spray anything directly on the screen.
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