Case Study - PC ComputerNotes

Case Study

I received a call last week from a woman who had gotten my card from a previous customer. Her complaint was that her computer no longer will boot into Windows95. She said that she keeps getting an error message, "something about the Registry", and then it just freezes up.

Arriving at her office, I asked for a little history. First off, absolutely no backups. She knew that she was supposed to back up, but they had never done it. She was definitely worried about her data and her customer's files.

Apparently, for the last three weeks, the computer would start out OK, but after about a half hour, it would just shut itself off. Upon reboot, it would go through SCANDISK and then back into Windows, work for awhile, and shut itself off again. Finally, it quit working all together and just comes up with Registry errors.

The original symptoms sounded like an overheating problem. It's funny how things seem to come in bunches. I had already replaced four power supplies in the last three weeks, on computers with the exact same symptoms.

I turned the computer on and put my hand in back. Sure enough, there was no air coming from the back of the power supply. Upon inspection, the fan wouldn't even try to turn. No SCANDISK this time, just a corrupted Registry error.

Turning the computer off, I opened it up, and blew out about a half inch of dust from inside (the staff seemed amazed that it could be so dirty). I replaced the power supply, turned the computer on and booted to the DOS prompt.

After moving to the WINDOWS directory, I renamed the Registry files, replaced them with SYSTEM.DA0 and USER.DA0, rebooted, and crossed my fingers.

It started up without any problems.

Things aren't always that easy, and they don't always turn out as good, but in this case it did. The customer was happy, and had me clean out the other two machines in the office. We found another power supply with a dead fan, and replaced it. I also made Registry backups for each computer, and left knowing I had a new customer.

She called me on Wednesday, and wants to discuss a backup system for the office computers. Also, I've already received a referral from her.

Things could have been worse if SYSTEM.DA0 and USER.DA0 had been corrupted as well. If you followed the examples I've described, tested them out, and continue to maintain these backups, you should feel fairly confident about recovering from any Registry problem.

Remember to make new backups whenever you add new hardware, software, or make any kind of changes that may affect the Registry.

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