Hardware Tips: Take a Crash Course in Emergency PC Recovery

Kirk Steers
From the August issue of PC World magazine

Sooner or later, a faltering hard disk, CPU, or other component will bring your PC to its knees. If a dead machine means you can't do your job, the failure may bring you to your knees as well, begging your boss or an angry client for mercy.

Waiting for the IT department or the local repair shop to fix your system, or arranging to use a loaner machine, can cost you hours of valuable work time. What you really need when disaster strikes is a way to get up and running fast.

First, find out what caused the problem: Wisps of acrid smoke wafting from your monitor's case, for example, send a very clear message. Unfortunately, the source of problems is rarely so obvious. Maybe a chip has failed, a Windows driver has been corrupted, or a cable has come loose. You can easily lose countless hours just trying to figure out what's wrong. Always remember the first rule of do-it-yourself PC repair: Know when to quit.

Or at least know when to ask--or pay--for expert help. Place a dollar value on an hour of your time and keep tabs on how much "money" you've invested as you go. It probably won't be too long before paying $35 to your PC maker's tech support line will seem like money well spent.

Save time by being prepared. When an airplane starts to sputter, the pilot pulls out a checklist and performs tasks that are known to work. Here's a troubleshooting checklist for your PC.

Check the obvious first: Make sure that all your power switches are turned on, and that your cables and cords are securely connected. Don't forget to check the fuse or reset switch on your surge protector.

Look in Device Manager: Windows' Device Manager will tell you if a component isn't working properly. To open Device Manager in Windows 98, Me, and 2000, right-click My Computer and select Properties (or press Windows- Break if you have a Windows keyboard) to open System Properties, and choose the Device Manager tab. In Windows XP, open System Properties as described above, select the Hardware tab, and click the Device Manager button.

A red X or a yellow circle with an exclamation point appearing next to the name of a device indicates a problem (see FIGURE 1). Double-click the listing to display the device's Properties screen, and then look in the 'Device status' box for more information (see FIGURE 2).

Test your suspicions: If you think a sound card, network adapter, CD-RW drive, or other device is misbehaving, disable it and see if the problem goes away. Open the device's Properties dialog box as described above. Under the General tab, choose Disable in this hardware profile (in Windows 98, Me, and 2000), or Do not use this device (disable) on the 'Device usage' drop-down menu (in Windows XP).

Check the plumbing: Turn off and unplug your PC, open its case, and make sure every cable, cord, and connector is properly attached. Before you start handling your PC's internals, make sure that you're properly grounded. It's best to use a grounding wrist strap, which costs about $10 at your local electronics store, but you can also discharge yourself momentarily by touching an antenna, water pipe, or other grounded object.

Sometimes detaching a connector and then reattaching it will take care of the problem. Likewise, expansion cards suffer from "creep"--they slowly work their way out of their motherboard slots. Carefully remove and replace them to ensure that they're properly reseated.

Try a different driver: Many hardware problems arise from conflicts relating to a device's software drivers. Check the Web site of your system or device manufacturer for updates. To find the version of your currently installed driver, open its Properties dialog box as described above and click the Driver tab (see FIGURE 3). Windows XP has a handy button on the tab that lets you reinstall an old driver when a newly installed one causes problems. (This happens more often than you might think, especially with graphics-card drivers.)

Perform some tests: Running a hardware-diagnostic program such as #1-PC Diagnostics' #1-TuffTest will perform a thorough check of your PC's hardware. You can download a limited free version. The more powerful shareware version of the utility is well worth the $10 price, however.

The typical service life of today's hard drives means that they will outlast the usefulness of the computers in which they're installed. But hard drives have internal parts spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute separated by less than the width of a human hair. It does not happen often, but sometimes hard drives fail before their time.

Recovering from a hard drive's premature demise means buying and installing a new drive, reinstalling and reconfiguring all of your software, and reloading your data from backups. This can entail hours, if not days, of downtime. And if you didn't back up your data...well, we won't even go there. But with just a little work, you'll never have to worry about a dead drive.

For years, mission-critical servers have been protected from the consequences of hard-drive failure by RAID, or Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks. RAID spreads data across several hard drives and makes all the drives appear as a single drive to the operating system. More-sophisticated RAID systems allow you to replace a failed drive without turning off the system; the data is re-created automatically with no interruption to you.

RAID technology comes in many flavors called levels, numbered 0 to 7, plus 10, 30, 50, 53, and 0+1. Each level provides different combinations of redundancy and performance. RAID levels 3 and up are in the realm of IT network professionals; they require a minimum of three hard drives and expensive controller cards. But levels 0 and 1 are affordable and easy enough to be implemented for single PCs and small networks.

To add RAID to your computer, you need a second hard drive and a PCI RAID controller card such as Promise Technology's $80 FastTrak100 TX2, which supports RAID levels 0 and 1, as well as the combination mode 0+1.

RAID level 0 distributes data across two drives via striping, which writes one bit of data to one drive, the next bit to the other drive, the third bit to the first drive, and so on. Because half as much data is being written to two drives simultaneously, disk performance is almost doubled. But RAID 0 offers no fault-tolerance: If either drive fails, all data on both drives is lost. RAID 1, on the other hand, provides hard-drive mirroring that instantly duplicates your primary drive--if either drive dies, you can continue working.

The FastTrak100 TX2 supports hot-swapping (the ability to replace a failed hard drive without having to shut down the PC); and for RAID 1 mirroring, it rebuilds the drive's data in the background. To make hot-swapping even easier, get at least one of Promise's SuperSwap drive housings. SuperSwap sits in a 5.25-inch drive bay and lets you replace a hard drive without opening the PC's case.

Of course, you'll need two housings, one for each drive. At around $70 each, that may seem like a bit of a luxury, but you can save a few dollars by buying the company's FastTrak100 TX2 Pro combination for around $170; it's the FastTrak100 TX2 RAID card bundled with two SuperSwap housings. You can use a single SuperSwap housing for instant, off-site backups. Just purchase an additional hard drive and swap it with the one in the SuperSwap housing whenever you want a complete system backup to go.

Be sure to check your motherboard before you rush out and buy a RAID controller card. Some motherboards have built-in RAID controller chips. Check your motherboard manual or look in your PC's Setup program (your screen will tell you which key to press before Windows loads) for RAID options. If you're building a PC or having one built for you, paying a little extra for a motherboard that supports RAID is worthwhile.

Minor defects in a hard drive, an improper Windows shutdown due to a power failure, or poorly written software can damage critical system files. A RAID mirror drive instantly copies these corruptions from the original hard drive.

Tracking down these problems is largely a matter of luck. Restoring an earlier version of the Windows Registry and running diagnostic utilities are a good start, but they don't always work, and they can take hours to complete.

The fastest fix may be to replace your operating system, software, and data. The Drive Image 2002 backup software from PowerQuest makes this easy (see FIGURE 4). Drive Image allows you to copy an entire drive partition to a single compressed file that you can store on a CD-R or -RW disc, another removable medium, or a second hard drive. The backup file can restore the original partition in less than an hour--often much quicker. Anything you added to the disk since you made the last image file will be lost, however, so keep your operating system and software in one partition and your data in another--each with an individual drive letter. I keep two backups of my software partition: one made when I first installed the OS and software, and another made after my most recent installation.

When trouble strikes, be prepared. A few minutes of work now can save you hours of toil later on.

Take inventory: Copy the manufacturer and model number of your key components. You'll find much of this information in the System Information utility. Click Start, Programs ( All Programs in Windows XP), Accessories, System Tools, System Information. Cut and paste the data into a document and print it out.

Hold on to your software, manuals, and drivers: If you can't find a paper manual, look on the product manufacturer's Web site for downloadable manuals, even for older and discontinued models.

Load Windows' .cab files on your hard drive: Placing Windows' compressed .cab system files on the hard drive makes reinstalling Windows files much easier. Copy the files with the .cab extension from the Windows disc to a directory on your hard drive. Whenever Windows asks for the CD, just point it to that directory.

Make a copy of your PC Setup program's settings: With a hard copy of your PC Setup program's BIOS settings, you won't have to reboot your system and enter Setup to know what they are. Enter the PC Setup program when your PC boots and take digital photographs of all the BIOS screens. Print the photographs or store them on your system, or both. Or simply copy them with pencil and paper.

Click here to view past Hardware Tips columns. Send your tips and questions to kirk_steers@pcworld.com. We pay $50 for published items. Kirk Steers is a PC World contributing editor.