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Publisher2.1 Rules to Upgrade By
We've repaired, upgraded,
and built hundreds of systems over the years, and learned a lot of
lessons the hard way while doing it. Here are the rules we live
by some big, some small, and some more honored in the breach.
We admit that we don't always take each of these
steps when we're doing something simple such as
swapping a video card, but you won't go far wrong
following them slavishly until you have enough experience to know
when it's safe to depart from them.
Twice. Do a verify pass, if
necessary, to make sure that what is on the backup tape matches what
is on the disk drive. If you're connected to a
network, copy at least your data and configuration files to a network
drive. It's much easier to retrieve them from there
than it is to recover from tape. If there's room on
the network drive, create a temporary folder and copy the entire
contents of the hard disk of the machine about to undergo surgery. If
you have neither a tape drive nor a network volume, but you do have a
CD or DVD writer, back up at least your important data and
configuration files to optical discs. About 99 times in 100 all of
this will be wasted effort. The 100th timewhen everything that
can go wrong does go wrongwill pay you back in spades for the
other 99.
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Have all of the hardware, software, and tools you'll
need lined up and waiting. You don't want to have to
stop in midupgrade to go off in search of a small Phillips
screwdriver or to drive to the store to buy a cable. Our first rule
of upgrading says you won't find the screwdriver you
need and the store will be closed. If your system can boot from the
CD- or DVD-ROM drive, configure it to do that and test it before
proceeding. Otherwise, make sure you have a boot disk with drivers
for your CD-ROM drive, and test it before you start tearing things
down. Create a new emergency repair diskette immediately before you
start the upgrade. Make certain you have the distribution disks for
the operating system, backup software, and any special drivers you
need. If you're tearing down your only PC, download
any drivers you will need, and copy the unzipped or executable
versions to floppies or burn them to CD before
you take the computer apart. Just following that last piece of advice
would have saved us many times from driving back to the office to
download a driver we needed when upgrading a computer at another
site.
Read the manual first. A quick read-through often uncovers potential
problems, hints, and tips that can make the upgrade go much more
smoothly. Check the web site for any new component you are
installing. You'll often find FAQs (Frequently Asked
Questions), Readme's, updated drivers, and other
information that can make the difference between a trouble-free
upgrade and a major mess. In fact, the quality of the web site that
supports a component is a large factor in our purchase decision, and
we suggest that you make it one in yours. Before we even consider
buying a major component, we check its web site to verify that it is
likely to have answers to any questions that may arise.
You may have a choice between a slow
manual way and a quick automatic way to accomplish a given task. The
latter may require spending a few bucks for a special-purpose utility
program, but may save you hours of trial and error, manual labor, and
aggravation. For example, if you are replacing a hard disk, you can
move the contents of the existing disk to the new disk by spending
hours doing a backup and restore, or you can buy a $15 utility
program that does the same thing in a few minutes. In fact, most hard
drives now come with software to migrate your data and programs
automatically from the old hard drive to the new one. For some
reason, few people use these programs or are even aware that they
exist. Throughout the book, we point out utilities (many of them
free) that we use to minimize manual trial-and-error work.
During
an upgrade, it's often important to be able to
return to your starting point. If you've just spent
an hour moving cables and changing DIP switches and jumpers,
it's almost impossible to remember what went where
originally. So, make sure to record each change as you make it. Some
people like a visual record of what they're doing,
and so use a digital camera to photograph the original state of the
system and each change as they make it. In particular, if you are
responsible for a large number of systems, the ability to file
digital camera images by date or trouble-ticket number may be useful.We find using a camera cumbersome, and prefer to use written or tape-
recorded notes. The method we've settled on is to
dictate the working details as we go along into a $30 Panasonic
microcassette recordere.g., "pin 1 on the
motherboard PS/2 keyboard connector is the red wire on the jack, with
position 4 empty." Once we finish, we transfer
important informationchanges to jumpers and Dual Inline Pin
(DIP) switches, what components we've added and
removed, etc.to the written log book for that computer. Each
time we buy or build a new computer, it gets its own log book with
its name on the cover. We use the black-and-white speckled hardbound
composition books that Office Depot sells for a couple of bucks.
When upgrading multiple components, do so
in phases. For example, to install a new video card and a new sound
card, leave the old video card in place while you install the new
sound card. Restart the computer and make sure the new sound card is
working properly before you install the new
video card. If you change only one thing at a time, any problems that
occur are clearly a result of that change, and are relatively easy to
track down and fix. If you swap multiple components simultaneously,
resulting problems are harder to troubleshoot because
you're never certain whether the problem is caused
by a bad or misconfigured new component, by a conflict between the
new components, or by a conflict between one or more of the new
components and one or more existing components.
Most PC user manuals tell you to
unplug the PC before working on it. They say that not because it is
good practice, but to minimize the risk of being sued if someone
somehow electrocutes himself while working on one of their PCs.
Disregard their advice. Every experienced technician we know leaves
the PC plugged in while working on it, and for good reason. Doing so
keeps the PC grounded, which minimizes the very real risk of static
electricity destroying sensitive chips. Best practice is to plug the
PC into a power strip or surge protector that is connected to the
wall receptacle, but turn the power strip off. That grounds the PC to
the building ground, but also ensures that no voltage can reach the
PC while you're working on it. Note that the
presence of a two-to-three-prong adapter anywhere in the chain
isolates the system from the dedicated ground circuit and eliminates
the value of keeping the system plugged in unless the grounding wire
on the adapter is connected to the building ground.
Disassembling a PC yields an incredible
number of screws and other small pieces. As you tear down a PC,
organize these parts using an egg carton or old ice cube tray. As we
can attest, one errant screw left on the floor can destroy a vacuum
cleaner. Worse, one unnoticed screw can short out and destroy the
motherboard and other components. The goal is to have all of the
small parts reinstalled or accounted for when you reassemble the PC.
Some people store the screws until they are needed by putting them
back into the original component after removing it. This takes a bit
longer, but does ensure that you use the proper screw for each
component.
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Many books tell you never to force
anything, and that's good advice as far as it goes.
If doing something requires excessive force, chances are a part is
misaligned, you have not removed a screw, or something similar. But
sometimes there is no alternative to applying force judiciously. For
example, drive power cables sometimes fit so tightly that the only
way to get them off is to grab them with pliers and pull hard. Some
combinations of expansion card and slot fit so tightly that you must
press very hard to seat the card. If you encounter such a situation,
verify that everything is lined up and otherwise as it should be (and
that there isn't a stray wire obstructing the slot).
Then use whatever force it takes to do the job, which may be
substantial.
An experienced PC technician working
on a system does a quick scan of the entire PC before performing the
smoke test by applying power to the PC. Don't skip
this step, and don't underestimate its importance.
Most PCs that fail the smoke test do so because this step was
ignored. Until you gain experience, it may take several minutes to
verify that all is as it should beall components secure, all
cables connected properly, no tools or other metal parts shorting
anything out, and so on. Once you are comfortable working inside PCs,
this step takes 15 seconds, but that may be the most important 15
seconds of the whole upgrade.
The moment of greatest danger comes when
you power up the PC for the first time. Do what's
necessary to minimize damage if the smoke test fails. If the system
fails catastrophicallywhich sometimes happens no matter how
careful you aredon't smoke more than you have
to. For example, we recently built a server for which
we'd bought four 512 MB DIMM memory modules and two
15K Cheetah SCSI drives. A new motherboard sometimes shorts out the
first time it's powered up, so rather than
installing the new DIMMs and hard drives before testing, we used an
old 128 MB DIMM and an old Barracuda hard disk to verify that the
motherboard was good and all connections were right. Once we passed
that hurdle, we installed the new DIMMs and hard disks. If the system
had smoked, we'd have been out a motherboard, but
our expensive new DIMMs and hard disks would be safe. We mentioned
earlier another advantage to doing things this way. Limiting
simultaneous changes makes it easier to get the hardware working
properly. Starting small and adding components incrementally also
helps you get Plug and Play configured more easily, particularly when
you're installing
"difficult" peripherals such as
sound cards, which want to grab every free resource in sight.
Don't discard the
components you pull. With new hard disks priced near $1 per gigabyte,
an old 1 GB hard disk may not seem worth keeping. But you may be glad
you have it the next time you need to troubleshoot your system.
Despite those correspondence school ads that show a technician using
an oscilloscope to troubleshoot a PC, nobody really does it that way.
In the real world, you troubleshoot PCs by swapping components.
Keeping old components you pull during upgrades is a convenient (and
free) way to accumulate the swappers you'll need
later on to troubleshoot problems with this or another PC. Label them
"known good," date them, and put
them on the shelf.
An easy way to tell an experienced
technician from a novice is to see when he reassembles the case.
Experts wait until everything is installed and tested before putting
the lid back on and securing the external cables. A novice installs
the component, reassembles the case, reconnects all the cables, and
then tests it. We watched one young woman do
this several times before she caught on.
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