I’ve never been a fan of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, but that doesn’t make the title any less true. Are you ready with a backup and repair plan?

This is especially true when it comes to the technology we count on in our daily lives and at work. Anyone worth their salt in the IT field know it’s not a matter of “if” but when will things break. We can help you prepare to handle it with no sweat. The sooner we work out a backup and repair plan for you the better your options will be and the less painful the repair and upgrade process will be.

To prove that I’m not trying to scare you here I’ll share my own stories from recent weeks:

The System’s Down

In my personal life I enjoy playing video games either solo or with friends. Two nights a week are scheduled for online gaming with my friends, so a Thursday evening rolled around and I started up my desktop gaming PC that I built but it didn’t start up. Yikes! Gratefully, I own other platforms like Valve’s Steam Deck, a Nintendo Switch, and a PS5 that we were able to play a different game on together. But all this came about a month after one of my friends, Lee, had his gaming PC die on him in much the same fashion.

Don’t get it twisted, I know this is a first world problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless.

So over the weekend after that I began troubleshooting my PC and it allowed me to clean up and dust inside. The problem was that it was having trouble POST’ing (Power On Self Test). The light would come on and the system fan would spin and then it would go completely off before it even output the BIOS or Windows 10.

So I went through testing parts and narrowing down what was and what was not working inside. The Power Supply can often be an issue when you see these symptoms, so I used the jumper test to confirm that it was still working. RAM is also another possible cause of the problem, so I tried testing each module one by one and those seemed to work. There were some issues with the way I re-seated them, but ultimately I was able to get one to work and the PC back online. Then I tried all of them and got the whole PC to boot up.

The Problem that Almost Wasn’t

“We’re back in business!” I thought with only a little bit of time working on it and no new parts needed. So I went on about using it some for a while and made sure that the data backup that was set to run finished then shut it down after the weekend. If you are worried about your PC, contact us and ask about a backup and repair plan that works for you! No problem feels that bad when you’re confident in your backup solutions.

When it Rains it Pours

Meanwhile I got the itch to play a retro game on PlayStation 2, so I plugged mine in and found that the DVD-ROM drive was not working there and while it would start up it made some clicking sounds and acted like there was no game disc in it. Again, not that big of a deal, but a bit discouraging nonetheless.

Then the next week I had another online gaming night and went to turn on my PC to play and the same problem happened. Except this time I was unable to get it to start no matter what I did. Given the working Power Supply Unit (PSU) and the working RAM, the situation must be that the motherboard was no longer working. Rest in pieces, old gaming PC.

We Can Rebuild Him. We Have the Technology.

But from those pieces I was able to reuse a lot of the PC itself and put a decent but not exorbitant bit of money to repairing the PC. The final price tag was just over $500 and the repairs came with some great upgrades. I took my time to deliberate and plan what to get, and what I could keep.

The components that needed replacement were the motherboard, CPU (with cooler), and RAM. All other components I tested and worked so I kept them: the case, the HDD’s (Hard Disk Drives) and SSD’s (Solid State Drives), the Graphics Card, the monitors, keyboard, mouse, and DVD-RW drive.

The Best Backup Plan is Knowing Who to Ask

My gaming buddies were also a big help in asking about certain part of the upgrade plan considering Lee and another friend Nic had both done similar upgrades and repairs. I wanted to switch to an AMD processor instead of using Intel this time around and there are differences. Both brands are good, but I wanted AMD and needed to know about their current line the Ryzen series.

Additionally, manufacturers tend to be confusing about RAM and it’s difficult to be sure that you get modules that actually work with your motherboard. Many list OC or “Overclocked” speeds, likely because it sounds faster, but if you don’t go by the JEDEC standard it may not work in your system. Nic helped me remember to triple-check for RAM compatibility which is a great practice for us all to have.

Finally, there are some motherboards for AMD CPU’s that either are not compatible with certain processors or some that require a firmware update out of the box before you can use them. I wanted one that would work as soon as I assembled it and ended up finding a good option for a bit more money from MSI. It also has built-in WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5, two features that I use and appreciate having.

Down Goes the Laptop

One of the days while I was planning the repair and upgrade, I came home from a long appointment and decided to log in to my laptop just to see where my emails stood and catch up on other work. Much to my chagrin, my laptop didn’t boot up. If you work with me a while you’ll hear me repeat the British WWII era slogan: Keep calm and carry on. Part of what keeps me calm throughout this process on my own devices is knowing I have a backup and repair plan for everything I use.

My laptop did POST so there’s a start there. But it complained about the fans not working with a Dell diagnostic program that loaded automatically. While I had been dusting and cleaning my desktop, I also did my laptop and was worried I bumped something inside. So I opened up the case again and re-seated some of the plugs like the power and the fans. Then I restarted it and ran the automatic diagnostics.

It cleared the tests and worked this time. Whew! Following that I booted to Windows 11, and ran Dell’s SupportAssist, and updated any drivers in the system. I usually use Linux in a dual boot, but the system hardware updates work better on Windows with Dell.

Live in your world, play in ours! PS2 Repairs

With one bullet dodged, I got a bit more confidence and looked up repair and replacement options for my PlayStation 2. Being an older retro game console there’s not as many clear backup and repair plans out there. It’s a bit costly to get a replacement part so I decided to try a repair.

Naturally I voided the already expired warranty to get inside the case of the device and begin to repair it. I started cleaning and dusting, though it wasn’t too bad overall. Well that didn’t fix it. It wasn’t until later that I was able to find a gear that is used to calibrate the disc spinning mechanism and by fine tuning that, the discs and games ran again.