Laptop Repair Birmingham

Technology moves fast, computers and laptops go out of date almost as soon as you purchase them and they leave the shop. With the ever decreasing prices of laptops we’ve been finding that customers are dumping their old laptops for new one of all shapes and sizes. Be it net books or iPads many customers are upgrading there laptop system (some only a couple of years old) for new systems with Windows 7 installed.
Here at Laptop Repair Birmingham we get many inquiries about what to do with old laptops. The most common thing we see is an old laptop dumped in the bin! This is wrong on 3 levels.

1) There are parts inside older laptops that can be used. Usually we can salvage the laptop LCD screen. We get many customers coming to us with smashed or cracked laptop screens – instead of having to purchase a new screen we can replace the screen with a reconditioned one from an older laptop. This is an advantage to the environment and the customer as it reduces the cost of such a repair.

2) The environment does not like laptop batteries if fact they are not really green at all. If a laptop ends up in a landfill then nothing could be worse, very toxic! We try and recycle older batteries from laptops at all cost.

3) Starving kids in Africa need laptops to. When we find a laptop that can be cleaned up we’ll wipe the data off it give it a new bill of health and try and sell it. Sometimes laptops are just too old and slow for the western world however and they can’t be sold – in this case we donate them to third world countries where they’ll be put to good use. Again avoiding them ending up in a landfill.

More often than not we see faulty laptop keyboards.  There are a range of reasons that a laptop keyboard can become defective.  Most commonly this is due to user abuse of the laptop   Either someone has pried a key or a set of keys from the keyboard, spilt liquid on the keyboard or just got the keyboard very dirty.  9 out of 10 times this is the reason we repair laptop keyboards in Birmingham.




Occasionally we’ll find a paper clip or build of hair/dust/grime in the keyboard itself which will render the laptop keyboard in operable.   You’ll be please to hear that a laptop keyboard repair is not as costly as you might think.  Many suppliers in the Far East now offer replica keyboards to fit your model of laptop at knock down prices.  In fact a whole new keyboard on average on costs around £20.


The time involved to replace a laptop keyboard is also not that great with the majority of laptop keyboard repair jobs only taking between 10 – 20 minutes.  All we require from the customer prior to supplying and fitting a new laptop keyboard is the model number of the laptop.


As mentioned earlier sometimes only a few keys are missing from the keyboard if this is the case it may be possible for the end user to source replacement keys themselves on websites like ebay by performing a search “laptop keys for MODEL NUMBER” replacing MODEL NUMBER with the model of laptop you have.  You can usually find the model number or you laptop printed on the front of the laptop for example Dell Inspirion 1500 or Toshiba Satellite A300.  However sometimes the model number is on the back of the laptop on a printed label.


Another great tip if your in a hurry to access the data on your laptop and have a defective laptop is to use a USB keyboard from a regular desktop PC.  Nowadays the majority of households have more than one PC and if you do have a desktop PC or a friend/colleague has a PC you might be able to borrow it for 5 minutes to access that crucial data.  Please remember as most laptops have USB ports there should not be an issue using a USB keyboard on your laptop.  However some older models (in fact all desktop PCs over 5 year) have a different style of connector which is not USB, known as PS2.  Unfortunately PS2 connection are not common on laptops so you’ll have a bit of difficulty using an older keyboard that is not USB.


Sometimes the keyboard works fine it just typing the wrong keys.  This can happen for one of two reasons.
1)    The regional settings on your version of Windows is set to USA.  This will mean that when you use the @ key a “ appears instead.  This is another common issue, in Windows control panel just change the regional settings to UK and that should fix the problem.


2)    The other issue may be your keyboard is typing numbers instead of letters.  More that often this is because you have the NUM Lock on your keyboard on, the num lock means “Numerical Keypad lock”  you can fix this by turning the num lock off.  It’s always been a bit of a question why laptop manufacturers include a num lock on a laptop keyboard, I do not know any one that uses a num-lock on a laptop keyboard, most accountants usually have a USB numerical keypad for such activities.

We are always repairing laptops for customers here at Laptop Repair Birmingham.  The most common hardware fault we see is the laptop hard drive; a close 2nd is the laptop screen.  Quite often these come to us smashed or cracked and we have to repair the laptop screen LCD display.
Laptop hard drives are a bit like small record players that your mum and Dad would have used.  Vinyl records did have a tendency to get scratched or even shattered.   The same can be said for laptop hard disc drives.  They usually fail because of bad blocks on the drive (similar to a scratched discs) If important information is contained on the bad block of the drive this will sometimes not allow the operating system to start (Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 / OSX)
Sometimes the motor inside the drive fails this means that the disc inside the laptop hard disc drive will not rotate and the information (data) can’t be accessed.  The other failure common that we see at Laptop Repair Birmingham is a build up of dust or static electricity on the hard drive’s motherboard.  This can render the board useless and the logic circuits that control the drive don’t work which means the data can’t be passed to the laptop motherboard.
Laptop hard drive repairs are common and can easily be done by our engineers.  The cost of a new laptop hard drive all depends on the capacity (size) of the existing laptop hard drive.  Laptop Repair Birmingham offers a range of drives and sizes.  You can even request a solid state drive to be installed in place of the older motor driven drives.  This will make your laptop much faster as the hard drive in a laptop is one of the main speed bottle necks nowadays.  When flash drives in laptops become more popular we’ll probably be out of business as we so many failed drives.
Once a new drive has been decided on for your laptop it’s time to install we always take the old drive out your laptop and try and recover any data if necessary.  The type of data that Laptop Repair Birmingham can recover is usually files/music/pictures/videos/word excel documents.  At this time we are   unable to recover software from your laptop this will have to be re-installed from the original CD or downloaded from the correct website.
Once the new drive is installed on your laptop it’s a case of re-installing the operating system and system drivers.  This can be a lengthy process however we have a fixed fee for such a repair so the costs don’t get out of hand.  Once the operating system and drivers are in place we restore the original data from your old drive back onto the new one.

You’ll usually find that this type of repair process is well worth the money as you’ll get a larger capacity drive which will give you more space to download to and we’ll only use quality drives, some laptop hard drives by certain manufactures fail more than others.  We only use the best components for the job.  When the operating system has been installed there is no bloatware or manufacture software installed so you usually have a much quicker laptop after this process.

If you can afford to upgrade to Window 7 then this is even better as windows vista really does slow down a laptop so consider this also.
Our next blog post will cover laptop screen repair also known as LCD screen replacement service.  We’re Birmingham’s #1 for this!

I’m writing this blog article in google Docs. This is a hosted software solution, commonly called “The Cloud”. The software is free and you don’t even have to install any packages or CD’s to get it running! It’s all based in the Internet browser. There are many free software solutions for laptops here are a list of the top 5 that no laptop should go without.

1) VLC media player: This is a free utility that allows you to watch and listen to all forms of media on your laptop or computer. Many movies that can be downloaded off the Internet will be squeezed into a smaller size using a compression technique that utilises what is known as a codec. Some media players play back movies and video files better than others VLC is top of the pile when it comes to all round compatibility.

2) Google Docs: I’ve only started using this free service offered by the giant that is google and I am impressed with the ease of access and use. Google Docs is a free web based portal that hosted your regular type of office software for word processing, spreadsheets and presentation. Add on Google other service GMail and you’ve got a complete office solution for free! The only draw back is that you must have an active Internet connection to access this software. Not ideal if you are using a laptop and are mobile where there is no connection.

3) VNC: This software allows you to connect to other computers. It’s been around for along time and is used by IT support people. We here at Laptop Repair Birmingham use it all the time when customers & clients call with IT support issues in Birmingham. Simple remote access to the clients computer so the IT problems can be fixed without any need for a call out charge if the client has an active Internet connection.

4) Malwarebytes: I’m not going to name any free anti virus software because there is limited solutions that are free. You pay for what you get. However Malwarebytes anti-malware is perfect for cleaning systems that have become infected with viruses. Virus removal services in Birmingham are free of charge if you know where to look and the solution is Malwarebytes if you can access your computer or laptop and install it.

5) Firefox: This is a web browser, I used to always use Internet Explorer however it became bloated and I was looking for something a bit faster. FireFox is not the most popular browser but it does have a good share of the market. What makes FireFox better that the rest of the free browsers is the speed and the added plug-ins. There is a huge community of people that add free plug-ins and browser customisations to firefox – all free of charge.

Quite often we get calls from customers inquiring about data recover services in Birmingham. These can range from a laptop that is no longer starting up to someone that has accidentally deleted files from their laptop computer. Depending on the state of the hard disc drive (this is the part inside a computer that stores the data) the data can easily be recovered.

The first step to recovering data from a laptop or computer is to get exactly what data/information needs recovered. 9 out of 10 times this is usually photos that the user has not made a backup of. All their holiday or baby snaps stored on a laptop with no backup, how many times have we seen this? Don’t ask! You’d be amazed that the amount of businesses that don’t have any back solution for their IT systems. I’m not going to name names but how much is your information worth? And where would you be without it?

Anyway back to data recovery. Once we’ve got a list of data to be restored off your laptop we’ll dismantle your laptop and extract the hard drive. The hard drive will then be attached to another computer using specific adapters designed to read laptop/computer hard drives. Once we have the disc ready to be read from another system it’s just a matter of launching the correct software for the job. The data recovery process can take 2 minutes to 2 days depending on how much data has to be recovered. We don’t charge for the time taken just a flat fee you’ll be happy to hear.

In some instances the hard drive has completely failed and either the motor in the disc or the drive itself has been damaged in some way. Taking the form of bad blocks or dust inside the drive. If after out initial data recovery procedure the drive is found to have one of these faults unfortunately the data recovery process can become a lot more expensive as the drive will have to be sent to a specialist company that deals with damaged/failed drives. This usually involves opening the disk up in a clean dust free environment, almost surgical environment. Removing the hard disc drive platters and placing them into a new drive which in most cases has to be the same model/make as the original drive.

Of course any advanced data recovery that takes place will come at an additional cost however you will be given a price for the job prior to any work commencing. Laptop repair Birmingham pride ourselves on the most economical approach to your IT issues so you can be guaranteed the best price.

Common Data recovery and data retrieval includes

Files & Documents: excel, words, pdf’s
Pictures & Graphics: jepg’s, gif’s, photoshop files
Emails: Outlook Express, Outlook & AOL
Software License Keys: Microsoft Office / Microsoft Windows
Music: iTunes Library, nokia, MP3’s & WAVs

If you fancy trying to recover the data yourself be advised that you’ll need another computer system to plug the hard drive into. As mentioned you’ll need to take the existing hard disc drive out of your current system either a desktop computer or laptop then using a USB to either SATA or IDE adapter hook this up to a separate computer system. The majority of data that you’ll be trying to recover is located in the following directories depending on what version of Windows your running.

Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Desktop
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\My Documents
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\My Pictures

Windows Vista / 7

C:\Users\User Name\My Documents
C:\Users\User Name\Pictures
C:\Users\User Name\Music

Replace C with the attached drive letter and user name with your username.
This can be a complicated process and you are advised to get a professional to get the job done right without having to invest on data recovery software and adapters to undertake this job. The instructions above are to illustrate what exactly laptop repair Birmingham will be doing to recover your data.

I’m going to give you a suggestion call 0121-3690911 this is the number for laptop repair Birmingham.  If you are reading this then you’re probably already on our website http://www.laptoprepair-birmingham.co.uk you can even email us for a quote however we’ll probably be able to give you a more direct answer over the phone if you’ve got a laptop query or question.

There are many problems that can go wrong with laptops and laptop repair Birmingham can usually identify the fault 95% of the time over the phone and give you a estimate there and then.  Our labour costs are minimal and we’ll charge a lot less than our competitors.  This is because we do not have a shop premises and can pass the saving onto our customers.  The only thing you’ve got to lose if you don’t call 0121-3690911 is money to some overpriced big name company that will promise to repair your laptop and wipe all the data off it probably – this is standard practice by the big names!

We provide IT support and computer maintenance as well as PC help and advice to many local clients in and around Birmingham.  It’s amazing how people in the year 2010 are so dependent on an internet connection for daily tasks.  We are well aware of this and always aim to have your laptop back to you within the shortest time after a repair.

Here is a list of common laptop repair issues that we undertake.  We provide repairs to the following laptop manufacturers.

Sony, Dell, Toshiba, Advent, Packard Bell, Acer, Samsung, HP, IBM, Median

We are the laptop doctors in Birmingham!

Smashed laptop screen

No power, faulty power, only lights blinking, no lights coming on.

Missing laptop keys, faulty keyboards.

Spilled tea, coffee, wine, water, liquid on laptop?

Accidentally damaged, dropped, or abused your netbook?

Here is a list of area’s that we cover including Birmingham:

Acocks Green, Aston, Bartley Green, Billesley , Bordesley Green , Bournville , Brandwood , Edgbaston, Erdington , Hall Green, Handsworth Wood , Harborne , Hodge Hill , Kings Norton, Kingstanding , Ladywood , Longbridge, Lozells & East Handsworth , Moseley & Kings Heath , Nechells , Northfield , Oscott , Perry Barr , Quinton , Selly Oak, Shard End , Sheldon , Soho , South Yardley , Sparkbrook , Springfield , Stechford & Yardley North , Stockland Green , Sutton Four Oaks , Sutton New Hall , Sutton Trinity , Sutton Vesey , Tyburn , Washwood Heath , Weoley of course our geography naming ain’t that great so let us know if we’ve missed an area of Birmingham out on this list.

Otherlaptop repair issues include

Anti  virus removal

Spyware

Malware

ID Theft prevention

Security

System tune-ups, PC MOTs, computer optimisation, make your laptop go faster.

Software and hardware upgrades, sales and service.

Data retrieval, backup and recovery.

Internet, broadband connection issues help support.

Networking printers, file sharing, streaming media around the home

The list is almost endless at this point so if you’re still not sure if we cover a laptop or computer issue then call us on 0121-3690911 and we’ll put you straight, best of all you’ll speak directly to an engineer for a fast response to your query.

You’ll find that there are a growing number of laptop manufacturers using cheaper components inside laptops including hard drives, this is a bad move by manufacturers to provide the customer with a cheaper laptop.  The game is almost up as there have been many HP laptops defects that angry customers are starting to be weary of.  The simple fact is that you pay for what you get.

We only use the highest quality laptop components when repairing a laptop as this allows us to provide a warranty for the repair as we know we’re not using cheap 2^nd hand ebay items like some competitors.  We use only the best and source them direct from the wholesalers.  We make money on the service and repair of your laptop and will not mark up the cost of hard ware components that need replaced, this keeps the customer happy as we rely on internet and word of mouth to let potential customers know about our service and support in Birmingham.

Laptops come in all shapes and sizes.  Overtime your notebook computer will start to slow down.  This is where an upgrade can become quite helpful and bring new life to an older laptop.  Unfortunately the nature of laptops brings around some restrictions on what exactly can be upgraded.  Unlike a desktop computer where anything can be upgraded laptops are more difficult to upgrade due to ease of access of specific components.

Here are a list of common laptop upgradable components.

Laptop hard drive: upgrading the laptop is a simple procedure that our engineers can carry out.  You have the choice of cloning your existing hard drive of a fresh install of the operating system. 

Laptop RAM (memory): You’ll find on older laptops upgrading the RAM (random access memory) will give a real speed boot.  New systems that get this upgrade the performance will be only noticeable.

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 is the new version of Windows  If you are running windows Vista currently you’ll gain a performance boost by upgrading to Windows 7.  If however you are running Windows XP the speed difference may not be noticeable but you’ll benefit from all the added bonuses that Windows  has to offer.

Optical Drive: Older laptops may only have a CD or DVD drive.  Newer optical drives will have the writtale option so you can burn CDs/DVDs and even Blu-Ray playback if your laptop is up for the job.

We try and give our customers the best option for an upgrade on their laptop after an initial inspection.  50% of the time you’ll find a re-install of the operating system or defragmentation of the hard drive may all be that’s required.  Give us a call to enquire about laptop upgrades in the Birmingham area.

Another software upgrade!  Yup Microsoft have released Windows 7 and they want you to upgrade and buy it. Well if you have a fairly new laptop and don’t have Windows 7 on it then maybe you should think about it.

Why?

Laptops have slow slow hard disc drives, that’s the part of the notebook that holds all the information and software.  The hard disc drive or sometimes known as hard drive is like a small record player that you can read and write information to inside your laptop.  The operating system is stored on the hard drive.  Some hard drives are faster than others and you’ll find that hard drives inside laptops are smaller which means the motor is smaller and they spin slower.  This means your laptop hard drive is slower that a desktop hard drive (a desktop being a normal computer).

So what?

Well Windows Vista which is a fairly new version of Microsoft Windows churns away at your hard drive and if you are running a laptop guess what, Vista is constantly churning away at your laptop hard disc drive.  I can pretty much 100% guarantee that Microsoft Windows 7 will run much faster and smoother on a laptop compared to Windows Vista and it’s simply because of the hard drive factor.

However

You may have an older version of Windows, like windows XP if so all you may need is a RAM upgrade or a fresh install of the operating system to get things running smoother.  Windows 7 may be a possibility but Windows XP is no dead duck with proper anti virus your good to go.

Now anti virus software and RAM (random access memory) are important considerations to take into account when upgrading or purchasing a laptop.  You’ll find the more RAM aka memory that your system has the smoother it will run and I’m not talking about hard disc drive memory I’m talking about system RAM.  Hard drive memory is plentiful however a new laptop should have at least 2GB and for the more power hungry user 4GB.  You can get more memory in a laptop but you’ll pay a pretty price!  And probably not worth it as you’ll not notice more than 4GB in most uses.

More than one version of Windows 7

Antivirus software is cheap and sometimes free.  However I do recommend paying for something half decent.  You pay for what you get but stay away from big name brands like Mcafee or Norton Anti Virus.  They are rubbish, virus makers tend to exploit the two big names and they usually run your system slower anyway.  Go for something like Kaspersky or NOD32 these are far superior anti virus products that you can now get your hands on cheaply.  As I said stay away from the free stuff, I used to use it however after repairing a lot of laptop computers I know for a fact they do not always secure your system.

Back to Windows 7 you can get a well price upgrade version from big name online retailers without having to pay for the full version.  You should be looking at less than £100 and if you want we can help upgrade your system to this new operating system.

We regularly see laptops with missing keys or broken keyboards. If your laptop has a missing key or keys a cheaper way to fix it is to search for the model of your laptop on ebay. For example I have a HP DV 6000 laptop using ebay I would search for
“HP DV6000 laptop keys” quite often you’ll get companies or individuals selling laptop keys for keyboard for the model of laptop that you have. They keys are usually sourced from a faulty or broken laptop and they should not cost more than a couple of pounds. I hope this tip helps out some struggling laptop user.

If your laptop keyboard is not working at all we can swap it out for a new keyboard for pretty cheap price as swapping a keyboard is quite a quick service depending on the model and the keyboards themselves should not cost more than #50 at the top range of the market.

If you are not prepared to pay for a replacement keyboard another option would be to use a desktop keyboard. Just make sure it is a USB keyboard as some of the older style keyboards tend to have a PS/2 connection which laptops do not have. This of course limits the mobility of a laptop but is a handy hint if your don’t have the cash for a repair or are awaiting one of our engineers to provide a replacement keyboard.

Specialists in notebook & netbook maintenance and solutions.  We can make informed decisions and quotes to provide you with an economical choice when it comes to repairing laptops.  When you call us you’ll be speak directly to a laptop engineer in the Birmingham area who will be able to discuss the problem you are having and advise on solutions.

Generally there are common laptop issues which as stated in this website include

Virus Removal
Hard Disc Drive Replacement
LCD Screen Repair / Replacement
Power and USB socket fixes
No power to laptop
Windows not loading
Software installs
Wireless network issues
Laptop Upgrades
Keyboard repairs
Overheating repairs

Of course there are other issues with laptops that we can fix at an economical cost.  What makes our team different to competitors is that we do not have a shop or retail front so we can pass this saving on to the customer.  We rely solely on the internet to communicate our services and solutions there are not other forms of advertising so the costs we have to cover are minimal this saving can be passed onto the customer.  This allows us to undercut similar laptop repair companies in Birmingham who are still doing business the old fashioned way with a shop front.

Some larger shops charge as much as £230 to fix any laptop issue!  This figure is ludicrous.  You can purchase a new laptop for £300 so what are they charging so much?  So that you’ll buy a new laptop!  Don’t fall for this !  It wastes your money and is not environmentally friendly.

We fix most if not all laptop issues for under half the quoted figure mentioned above.  Repair costs are not as much as you may think and no where near the crazy prices PC world and the like try and fob you off with.

Sony are renowned for having expensive laptops and their repairs are just as expensive.  We recently had a customer come to us with a faulty Sony  VAIO laptop and he was quoted £500 to repair the screen.  Give me a break, £500, the laptop probably was not even worth £500.  We managed to fix the screen for £110 all in.

Call now for a quote – Laptop Repair Birmingham

0121-3690911