Newnes PC Troubleshooting Pocket Book

254 Pages·2004·5.312 MB·English

by  Howard Anderson

Newnes
PC Troubleshooting
Pocket Book

Newnes
PC Troubleshooting
Pocket Book
Second edition
Howard Anderson
and Mike Tooley
@
Newnes
AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD
PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO
Newnes
An imprint of Elsevier
Linacre House. Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP
200 Wheeler Road, Burlington. MA 01803
First published 1998
Second edition 2003
Copyright 0 1998.2003. Howard Anderson and Mike Tooley. All rights reserved
The right of Howard Anderson and Mike Tooley to be identified as the authors of
this work has been asserted in accordilna with the Copyright. Designs and Patents
Act 1988
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including
photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether
or not transicntly or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without
the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordana with the
provisions of the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7506 59882
For information on all Newnes publications
Typeset by Keyword Typesetting Services
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Law .biddles.co.uk
Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
1 .I A brief history of the PC 1
1.2 Conventions used in this book 3
1.3 General approach to troubleshooting 3
1.4 Where to start 4
1.5 What to ask 4
1.6 Categorizing faults 5
1.7 Hardware faults 7
I .8 Software faults 8
1.9 Configuration problems 9
1.10 Burn-in 9
1.1 1 What is fitted in your PC? 9
1.12 General points 9
2 The Internet 11
2.1 Internet, the main search engines 12
2.2 Searching the web 13
2.3 An example of searching the Internet 16
2.4 Can you trust the answers you find? 17
3 Microcomputer fundamentals 18
3.1 Microcomputer basics 18
3.2 Catching the bus 19
3.3 Expanding the system 19
3.4 Clocks and timing 22
3.5 Interrupting the system 22
3.6 Data representation 23
3.7 Binary and hexadecimal 24
3.8 A quick tour of the system 24
3.9 Operating systems 28
3.10 Dismantling a system 30
3.1 1 Safety first! 31
3.12 Static hazards 32
3.13 Cooling 33
4 System architecture and construction 35
4.1 PC architecture 35
V
vi Contents
4.2 Modern system board layouts 35
4.3 Wiring and cabling 37
38
4.4 Replacing the CPU
4.5 Upgrading the CPU 39
4.6 Troubleshooting the motherboard 39
45
5 The PC expansion buses
5.1 ISA bus 45
5.2 EISA bus 46
5.3 MCAbus 46
5.4 VESA (or VL) bus 46
5.5 PCI bus 46
5.6 Troubleshooting the PCI bus 48
5.7 Accelerated graphics port (AGP) 49
5.8 Troubleshooting the AGP 49
6 Semiconductorm emory 51
6.1 Memory basics 51
6.2 Upgrading your BIOS ROM 52
6.3 Random access memory (RAM) 53
6.4 RAM troubleshooting 55
6.5 CMOS RAM 57
6.6 Memory diagnostics 57
7 Printers and the printer interface 59
7. I Parallel I/O 59
7.2 ECP/EPP (Centronics) printer port 59
7.3 Printer types and emulations 60
7.4 Troubleshooting the printer 62
7.5 Printing from Windows 62
7.6 General printer troubleshooting 63
8 The serial communication ports 65
8.1 The RS-232 standard 65
8.2 Troubleshooting the serial ports 67
9 Replaceable disk drives 74
9.1 Floppy disk formats 74
9.2 The boot record 75
9.3 Booting the system 75
9.4 Troubleshooting the floppy disk drive 76
9.5 Replacing a disk drive 77
9.6 Zip and Jaz disk drives 78
9.7 Troubleshooting Zip disks 78
Contents vii
10 Hard disk drives 80
10.1 Hard drive basics 80
10.2 Disk performance 82
10.3 Drive interfaces 84
10.4 Comparative performance of SCSI and IDEiATA 88
10.5 Partitioning the disk 89
10.6 The master boot record YO
10.7 Troubleshooting the hard drive 91
10.8 Installing, replacing or upgrading a hard disk drive 94
10.9 Recovering from disaster 99
II Displays 102
I1 . I PC display standards 102
1 1.2 Video graphics 103
11.3 Graphics cards 104
11.4 Video RAM required 106
11.5 Display types 109
I1 .6 Troubleshooting displays 114
11.7 Troubleshooting video adapters 1 I5
12 Viruses 1 I6
12. I Types of virus 116
12.2 Email viruses I I8
12.3 Hoaxes II 8
12.4 Sources of viruses 119
12.5 Virus prevention 120
12.6 Detecting and eliminating viruses 121
12.7 Anti-virus software - seven of the best 123
12.8 Getting virus help via the Internet 124
13 Troubleshooting Windows error messages 126
13.1 Invalid page faults 128
13.2 General protection faults 129
13.3 Fatal exceptions 137
13.4 Protection errors 140
13.5 Kernel errors 143
13.6 Dynamic link library faults 144
13.7 Using Dr Watson 145
14 Troubleshooting Windows registry 155
14.1 Windows 95.98 and ME 155
14.2 Windows 2000 157
14.3 Windows XP 157
14.4 More links to registry related sites 158