PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

2.2 Tools

It's worthwhile to
assemble a toolkit that contains the hand tools and software
utilities that you need to work on PCs. If you work on PCs only
occasionally, you can get by with a fairly Spartan set of tools. If
you work on PCs frequently, devote some time, effort, and money to
assembling a reasonably complete set of hand tools and utilities. The
following sections detail the components that we've
found worth carrying in our toolkits.

2.2.1 Hand Tools

You don't need many
tools for routine PC upgrades and repairs. We've
successfully repaired PCs using only a Swiss Army Knife, but a more
complete set of tools makes jobs easier. Putting together a dedicated
PC toolkit and keeping it in a fixed location avoids the hassle of
looking for a tool when what you really want to do is work on your
PC.

Your first thought may be to buy one
of those PC toolkits available from various sources, but we suggest
you avoid them. Inexpensive kits available from most mail-order
vendors contain shoddy tools and are not worth even their low price.
Kits available from specialty catalogs such as Specialized Products
(www.specializedproducts.com) and
Jensen (www.jensentools.com) are
fine if you fix PCs for a living (or if your company buys the kit).
Otherwise, they're overkill and much too
expensive.

Instead of buying any of the prepackaged kits, head for Sears and
assemble your own PC toolkit. The basic tools you need for routine PC
work cost less than $50. Store these tools together, using a tool
wrapper (available from auto parts stores) or a zipper case
(available from specialty tool vendors or a home improvement
warehouse). You can often buy sets of pliers, screwdrivers, and so
forth for less than what you'd pay for each
individually. We carry only the tools we need, so we usually buy the
set, remove the ones we really wanted for our toolkit, and contribute
the remainder to the general stock of tools around the house. Table 2-1 lists what we carry and recommend as a basic
kit, with Sears part numbers in parentheses.

Even when we're not
working on PCs, we always carry a Swiss Army Knife (we like the
Victorinox CyberTool). If you don't routinely carry
a knife, add a disposable snap-off razor blade, which is useful for
opening blister-wrap packages, cutting cable ties, and so on. Also,
although we prefer drivers with individual handles, you may prefer a
handle with interchangeable bits. If so, get the Sears Craftsman
11-in-1 Screwdriver (41478), which includes five double-end bits and
also serves as a 1/4-inch nutdriver.

If you work on PCs frequently or have special requirements, you may
find useful the additions to the basic kit listed in Table 2-2. Depending on the types of PCs you work on,
some of these tools may also be needed in the basic kit. For example,
Compaq PCs use a lot of Torx fasteners.

If you work on a PC in
placeunder a desk or whereveryou often need a third
hand to hold the flashlight. For 20 years, Robert had been using the
straightforward male method, holding the flashlight in his mouth and
using his tongue to aim it. That works, but flashlights often taste
disgusting. Barbara, being a smart woman, bought a headband-mounted
flashlight, shown in Figure 2-1. That works even
better, and Robert has now sworn off chewing on flashlights.

Figure 2-1. Barbara wearing a head-mounted flashlight while replacing the cover on her all-SCSI main system

In addition to the tools themselves, a good toolkit contains several
consumable items, including:

PC components accumulate greasy brown residue, particularly if you
smoke or if you heat with gas or oil. This residue attracts and holds
dust, but can be removed with rubbing alcohol. Buy isopropanol
(isopropyl alcohol), which removes grease better than ethanol (ethyl
alcohol), and carry a small screw-top bottle of it in your kit.

Keep half a dozen Q-Tips or foam swabs for cleaning mouse rollers,
tape drive heads, and similar difficult-to-reach places. We prefer
the foam swabs, which do not deposit stray bits of cotton.

Carry a few of these as disposable cleaning aids. Moisten one with
rubbing alcohol so that it is wet, but not dripping, and use it to
clean larger components such as disk drives. Cotton balls come in at
least two varieties. In our experience, the ones intended for medical
use (which are really cotton) leave fibers all over the place. The
ones Barbara uses with her nail polish remover (which appear to be a
man-made fiber) don't shed nearly as much.

You can't get real Freon now because of the damage
it supposedly does to the ozone layer, but everyone still calls the
stuff you can buy Freon. We use Zero Residue Cleaner from Radio
Shack. It comes in a pressurized spray can with a small tube that
attaches to the nozzle and allows you to direct the spray. The stuff
evaporates almost instantly, and does a good job of cleaning really
dirty components. It's particularly useful for
cleaning inaccessible things such as the fan blades inside the power
supply enclosure, which tend to get really filthy and are almost
impossible to clean otherwise. It's also useful for
cleaning the heads on floppy and tape drives. Just stick in the tube
and give them a good squirt.

Many technicians carry a can of compressed clean, dry air to blow out
dust bunnies, to evaporate cleaner residue quickly, and so on.
We've never felt that air was worth paying for, so
we simply blow gently to accomplish the same thing. You can use an
ordinary drinking straw to direct and strengthen the airflow. Try not
to spray saliva on the components.

Many PC toolkits include a DIP chip puller and a DIP chip inserter, two tools that should never be used. The ubiquity of SIMM and DIMM modules means there aren't many socketed DIP chips in modern PCs. Your system may still have a few, however, and it's a good idea to reseat them every time you pop the cover. Do a quick scan of the motherboard and expansion cards, and just press down firmly with your thumb on each socketed chip you see. If the chip has begun to walk out of its socket, you'll feel it snap back into position as you press. For more about working with DIP chips, see http://www.hardwareguys.com/dipchipl.

2.2.2 Software Tools

In addition to hand tools, your toolkit
should have an assortment of floppy diskettes and CDs that contain
reporting and diagnostic utilities and essential applications. The
location of the kit can vary according to your own needs. If you have
only one PC, keep all this stuff near it. If you work on many PCs,
carry these items with you.

2.2.2.1 Essential utilities

The contents of your software
toolkit depend greatly on how many PCs you maintain, which operating
systems they run, and similar factors, but a good basic assortment
includes the following essential utilities:

Even if all your computers run Windows
or Linux, the most important item in your software toolkit is a DOS
boot diskette with drivers for the CD-ROM drive. When the PC
won't boot, this diskette allows you to install or
run diagnostic and repair utilities from a CD. Without it, you may be
stymied because you can't access the CD-ROM drive,
even to do something as basic as reinstalling the operating system.
That's true even if your system allows booting from
the CD-ROM drive because not all CDs are bootable. The Windows 9X
startup disk described in the following note fulfills this purpose.
If you run only Windows NT/2K/XP or Linux, borrow
someone's Windows 9X computer long enough to make a
DOS startup diskette.

To create the Windows 95/98/Me startup diskette, open the Control
Panel and double-click Add/Remove Programs. Display the Startup Disk
page and click the Create Disk icon to create a startup disk. This
diskette is bootable and contains the drivers needed to access most
IDE CD-ROM drives. You can use a Startup Disk created on any computer
to start any other computer. Floppy diskettes have a way of getting
lost or damaged, and you can't get far if you
can't boot a problem PC, so we generally keep
several copies of the Windows 98 SE Startup Disk distributed around
our work areas, in our toolkits, and so on.

On this or another diskette, depending on free space,
you'll want copies of essential utilities. At
minimum, add the following files to those present on the Windows 9X
startup floppy:

Necessary to reformat the hard disk, if that becomes unavoidable.

A standard ASCII editor that is bundled with Windows 9X and Windows
2000. Note that this is a standalone program, unlike earlier versions
that required BASIC. If disk space is tight, as it may be if you need
to add special drivers to the boot floppy, you can dispense with the
help file. This editor uses Alt-letter commandse.g., Alt-F to
open the file menu.

All three of these "extra" files
fit on a standard Windows 98 startup floppy.

The Windows 9X startup floppy contains drivers that work with nearly any IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive, and may work with a SCSI CD/DVD-ROM drive, depending on the type of host adapter it's connected to. If your system has a SCSI CD/DVD-ROM drive, verify that booting with the standard startup floppy allows you to access that drive. If it doesn't, download the DOS SCSI drivers from the web site of the manufacturer of your SCSI host adapter, copy them manually to the startup floppy, and make any necessary additions or changes to autoexec.bat and config.sys. Verify that the modified startup floppy will allow you to access your SCSI CD/DVD-ROM drive before you have a problem.

Years ago, PCs often came with
CheckIt, QAPlus, AMIDiag, or a similar diagnostic utility. Now system
vendors expect people to use the bundled Windows utilities. These are
fine, as far as they go, but they don't go very far.
Windows (particularly NT/2K/XP) and Linux isolate users and programs
from the hardware, which makes it hard for a diagnostic utility to do
its job. Also, Windows-based utilities are usable only if the
computer boots. You can use these bundled utilities to do things such
as detecting a misconfigured component or an IRQ conflict on a
bootable system, but that's not enough when you need
detailed information or when the PC won't boot. For
those situations, you need a DOS-based utility that provides
comprehensive testing and reporting. Any of the following products
will do the job. We use them all, but if you get only one, make it
SmithMicro Software CheckIt.

SiSoft Sandra is our favorite
Windows-based diagnostic utility and probably the most-used
diagnostic program, not least because a free version can be
downloaded from SiSoft. Although the free version is sufficient for
most people's needs, SiSoft also sells the $29
Sandra Professional which includes additional functionality and
technical support (http://www.sisoftware.demon.co.uk/sandra/).

Almost since the first PCs shipped, most
technicians have carried a copy of NU. Unfortunately, Norton
discontinued the DOS version some time ago. The current Windows
versions are nice desktop extenders, but provide limited hardware
diagnostics. Grab a copy of a late DOS version if you can find one
(http://www.norton.com/nu).

The best
dedicated hardware diagnostic program is CheckIt (http://www.checkit.com), available in several
versions. For most users, the $40 Portable Edition suffices. If you
repair PCs for a living, the $296 Professional Edition provides
additional tools and utilities that are worth having. Either edition
can boot independent of the installed OS, and so can be used to
diagnose hardware problems on a system that won't
boot to Windows. The various CheckIt products are hard to find in
retail stores, but can be ordered directly from the web site.

DOS diagnostics remain a popular shareware and public-domain software category, although most are single-purpose products (e.g., a serial port tester) rather than general-purpose diagnostics. If that's all you need, though, searching a shareware library such as http://www.shareware.com using the string diagnostic may turn up a program that does the job for free.

Recent
versions of Windows allow you to create an emergency disk that
contains critical system configuration data, part or all of the
registry, etc. Create or update this disk for a computer anytime you
make a significant change to it. Label and date the disk and store it
near the computer or keep it with your toolkit. If you
don't have a recent copy, do yourself a favor and
make one right now. Use the following procedures to create an
emergency disk:

For Windows 9X, we
recommend backing up the entire registry, which you can do simply by
copying the registry files to another location. The registry
comprises two files,

SYSTEM.DAT and

USER.DAT , which are located in the

\WINDOWS folder. These files are assigned the
Hidden and Read-Only attributes, so you'll need to
change the default settings of Windows Explorer before you can view
or copy them. To do so, from Explorer, choose View, then Folder
Options, and then click the View tab. Under Files and Folders locate
the Hidden Files item and mark the Show all files radio button. Once
you have rendered the registry files visible, you can use Copy, then
Paste to copy them to a different location.

USER.DAT is usually only a few hundred KB, and
will therefore easily fit on a floppy.

SYSTEM.DAT may be quite large. On our test-bed
system, for example, it is more than 3 MB. Fortunately, registry
files are easily compressible. Using a utility such as WinZip or
PKZip yields 4:1 or 5:1 compression, which allows the compressed

SYSTEM.DAT to fit on a floppy unless the
original file is huge.

The Windows 9X Startup Disk is not an emergency repair disk. It is a simple boot disk which does not contain registry files or other configuration data.

Click Start, Programs,
Accessories, System Tools, and then Backup. With Backup running,
click the Emergency Repair Disk icon to create the disk. In the
resulting dialog, mark the Also backup the registry... checkbox to
copy key system files to the repair directory on the hard disk. Like
the NT ERD, the Windows 2000/XP ERD is not bootable. To repair
Windows 2000/XP, you must boot either from the distribution CD or the
boot floppies.

The Windows 2000/XP ERD does not contain any registry files. Creating the ERD copies the registry files to the %SystemRoot%\Repair folder, where they may be lost if the hard disk crashes. To be safe, each time you create or update the ERD, copy the entire contents of that folder to another hard disk, network volume, or CD-R disc.

Use the
mkbootdisk command to produce an emergency boot
disk. This disk is specific to your system configuration, and should
be updated anytime you make significant hardware or configuration
changes. Also consider downloading a live-filesystem Linux
distribution such as Knoppix. You can create a bootable disk from
which Linux runs directly, allowing you to perform all sorts of
diagnostic tests.

You can find various boot disks and other utilities at http://www.bootdisk.com. Although we are not
lawyers and haven't looked into the legality of all
these utilities, many of them appear to be quite useful.

You need the OS distribution discs to
replace a failed hard disk, but you may also need them for routine
upgrades and maintenance. For example, Windows prompts for the
distribution disc to load drivers for a new device, and Linux
distribution discs may contain hundreds of programs that
weren't loaded during the initial installation. If
you've updated the operating system from the initial
distribution version (e.g., by applying a Windows NT/2000/XP Service
Pack), also keep the Service Pack or update CD handy.

With huge hard disks costing so little, we create a separate "distribution partition" on the hard disk for most Windows systems we build. We copy the distribution CD to this partition, along with service packs, the Office CD (and any other programs the system uses), the driver CDs for installed hardware, and so on. This has several benefits, including faster installation, the fact that you don't have to locate the CD when you change options or want to install additional modules, and the fact that you can, if necessary, completely rebuild the system using only a boot floppy to get started.

If you use a third-party backup
utility, keep a copy of the distribution disk in your kit to make
sure that you can restore backup tapes after reinstalling the
operating system. Few things are more frustrating than getting a
failed computer up again, having a good backup tape, but not having
the software at hand that you need to restore it.

If your system becomes infected by a
virus, you need to have a DOS-bootable, write-protected floppy disk
and a recent version of an antivirus utility. In fact, anytime a
system behaves strangely, a good first step is to run a quick virus
scan. The DOS-bootable floppy allows you to boot cleanly and detect
and remove a virus on a DOS or Windows 9X disk, or on a Windows
NT/2000/XP disk that is formatted as FAT. Because you cannot access
an NTFS volume after booting from a boot floppy, the only way to
remove a virus from these volumes is to boot the system from the hard
disk and run an antivirus utility from a local hard disk or network
drive. The big names in antivirus utilities are McAfee VirusScan from
Network Associates (http://www.nai.com), and Norton AntiVirus
from Symantec (http://www.symantec.com).
We've used both, and either is sufficient for the
task. Lately, however, we find ourselves using the
free-for-personal-use AVG AntiVirus from Grisoft (http://www.grisoft.com).

CMOS
settings store the current configuration of a PC. These settings
range from easily understood onescurrent date/time, boot
options, hard disk configuration, and so onto ones such as
advanced chipset configuration that only system designers fully
understand. Although you can manually record all of the settings on
paper, there's a better waya CMOS
save/restore utility. These utilities save CMOS settings to a disk
file, which you can later restore to re-create the settings in one
step. CheckIt Diagnostics Suite includes such a utility. If you
don't have CheckIt, download a dedicated CMOS
save/restore utility. There are many free and shareware alternatives
available. One that we've used is Benjamin
Johnston's free CMOSViewer, which runs under Windows
9X. Numerous DOS products are available from shareware archives such
as http://www.shareware.com.
Search for

CMOS .

Most expansion cards, modems, and disk drives come with a driver CD. Just keeping them all straight is hard enough, let alone making sure that you have the correct and most recent driver for a particular component. When we buy or build a computer, we create a folder for it on a network drive. When we buy a component that comes with a floppy diskette or CD with drivers, we copy the contents of that disk to a subfolder of that folder. If you have a CD burner, use it to make a customized CD for each computer. Collect all the drivers and other miscellany in a folder and copy them to a CD for that system. Include a change log in the root directory. When you replace a component, note that in the change log and burn a new CD with the updated and new drivers. If there's room on the CD, also include the operating system, diagnostic tools, and so forth.

2.2.2.2 Supplemental utilities

Beyond essential utilities, we
carry several supplemental utilities. These tools are nice to have,
but not absolutely required. Rather than doing things you
can't do without them, they save you
timesometimes a lot of time. If you work on PCs frequently,
every one of these commercial utilities belongs in your bag. Each of
them costs money, but unless your time is worth nothing an hour, each
pays for itself quicklyusually the first time you use it.

If you seldom work on PCs, these utilities probably
aren't worth buying ahead of time. Instead, try to
schedule your upgrades, and buy these as you need them. Note that
most of these utilities are available in both inexpensive
single-user/single-PC standard versions and much more expensive
versions that are licensed to be used by a single technician on
multiple PCs. The prices given are typical street prices for the
standard versions.

This $50 PowerQuest (http://www.powerquest.com) utility has saved
us countless hours of extra work over the years. Before Partition
Magic, the only way to change disk partitioning was to back up,
delete the old partitions, create and format new partitions, and
restore. In addition to taking hours, this process is perilous. More
than once, we've been unable to restore a backup
tape we made immediately before starting to repartition, even though
that tape had passed a verify flawlessly. Partition Magic lets you
repartition on the fly. It takes less time and is probably safer than
the old backup-and-restore method. In fact, although PowerQuest
recommends backing up before repartitioning, we confess that we
seldom bother to back up our own systems before repartitioning.
We've never lost any data doing it that way, but if
you repartition without backing up and you lose data, please
don't send us any nasty messages. You have been
warned.

This $20 PowerQuest utility is the
cheapest, easiest, and most reliable way we know to copy the contents
of one hard disk to anotherfor example when
you're replacing a hard disk. Using DriveCopy allows
you to avoid the time-consuming process of backing up the old drive,
installing the operating system on the new drive, and then doing a
restore. Instead, you simply connect the new drive with the old drive
still installed and use DriveCopy to replicate the entire contents of
the old drive to the new. When you remove the old drive, the system
boots from the new drive without further ado. Note that some
retail-boxed hard drives come with software that performs the same
function.

This PowerQuest utility is available
in a $50 DriveImage version and a DriveImage Pro version that is
priced per user. DriveImage Pro is primarily a disk cloning product.
It allows you to create an image of a master disk and then replicate
that image to multiple hard disksjust the thing when you need
to set up 100 identical workstations. It even has a SID editor, which
allows you to get around the problem of Windows NT's
unique SIDs. As a personal utility, DriveImage is useful for
migrating programs and data between partitions and for disaster
recovery. Unlike DriveCopy, DriveImage can copy individual
partitions, can change the partition size after copying to the
destination, and can automatically resize partitions to fit within a
smaller drive. As useful as all this is, the really important thing
about DriveImage is that it can create a compressed image of a
partition. The image file typically occupies about one-quarter of the
space used on the source partition, and can be stored on another
partition or on removable media. If disaster strikes, you can recover
the image file automatically using the bootable recovery floppies
that DriveImage creates for you. Anytime we're about
to do a significant software upgrade to a system, we run DriveImage
first to create an image backup. That way, if the upgrade ends up
causing a problem, we can immediately roll back the system to its
original state.

This
$50 tool from Sonera Technologies (http://www.displaymate.com) does just one
thing, but does it supremely well. It helps you optimize your video
card and monitor. More than any other PC component, monitors can vary
significantly between individual examples of the same model. We
don't buy an expensive monitor without using
DisplayMate to test it first, and neither should you. DisplayMate is
also useful on an ongoing basis. Monitors change as they age. Using
DisplayMate to tune them periodically results in the best possible
picture. You can download a demo from the web site that is sufficient
for casual testing.

The best way we've found to organize and protect CDs is to lose the jewel cases and store the CDs in one of those zippered vinyl audio CD wallets you can buy for a few dollars at Wal-Mart or Best Buy. They use plastic or Tyvek sleeves to protect the CDs, hold from a half dozen to two dozen CDs, and make it easy to find the one you want. If the CD has a serial number or init key on the original jewel case, make sure to record it on the CD, using a soft permanent marker on the label side. We stock one of these wallets with essential CDsWindows 95/98/NT/2K/XP and Red Hat Linux distribution CDs, Office, various diagnostics, and so onand always carry it with us. We also buy a CD wallet for each PC we buy or build. New PCs usually arrive with several CDs, and even video, sound, or modem cards are likely to come with their own CDs. Storing these CDs in one place, organized by the system they belong to, makes it much easier to locate the one you need.