PC Maintenance, Troubleshooting and Diagnosis - Research Proposal Example

?PC Maintenance, Troubleshooting and Diagnosis From cafes, to rooms full taking down s on a laptop, to traditional workplaces with a PC on every desk, to homes, offices and department stores, computers have essentially become ubiquitous, its purposes and necessities largely varying, but absolutely required on an everyday basis nonetheless. The need for efficient, accurate, dependable, well organized and time saving work is the raison d'etre of computers, and PCs have invariably taken their place comfortably in contemporary life, for a day without it, and we would be complaining about how the day has been very tiresome and frustrating, detaching us from the rest of the world by restricting communication to the rest of the world through social networking and other media. Considering this, it seemed to me that one fine morning when my PC crashes and I lose all my data, I would probably also lose my calm and I would be stranded alone in my room and I would do everything possible to have someone fix it as quickly as it can be fixed. This brought to me another argument, 'would I have to hire a professional for every time I lose data or have problems with my computer', which made me take an interest in troubleshooting, maintenance and diagnosis. I wanted to be able to deal with common issues I face with my PC, without having to rely on another person or spending a great deal of my money on the same, since nowadays virtually everything is available on the internet and moreover, it is free for anyone to take and make use of. So I struck me that with proper fishing of data around the net and following instructions correctly, I can pretty much come up with feasible solutions to any problem which might occur with my computer. I began to think of the most common and most frustrating issues that I have had with my PC and made a list of it. Going through the list, it became evident that, whatever the problem there is with my PC, I tend to worry most when those problems cause me to lose data, files or folders. I realized that several companies have even gone out of business after having lost vital files and data, which meant that preventing data loss was incontrovertibly an important part of maintenance. I found it ironic that the value of the hardware of my PC was insignificant as compared to the data that my PC contained and intended to learn to deal with it. It occurred to me that in order to be able to overcome data loss, I would first have to understand data loss, to understand why it occurs and learn to troubleshoot and diagnose the problem. I intended to find answers to • What causes data loss? • How I can protect drives and data • How I can recover directory damage, FAT and critical information This study purports to bring to light feasible and self-evaluable ways to identify, diagnose and make right some of the common and frequently occurring problems. Causes of data loss: Hardware and system failures are the leading cause for data failure, accounting for at least 44% of all data loss. (Bigelow, 2002). Electrical failures and improper shutting down, failures of drive circuitry or disk drive crashes can cause hardware failures, causing previously accessible data to be lost. Often, the drive may not be spinning, and we may hear rattling or scraping noises from the drive while booting. These failures can usually be prevented by humidity and temperature controlled environment, by installing a UPS. Critical data can be saved by using a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) which will mirror the disk drives, enabling us to recreate the lost data. It is important to keep the drive in a clean environment, and in the case of a drive failure, we must not operate the drive as it can exacerbate data loss, causing the drive to be corrupted further. Software recovery utilities are a completely bad procedure to resort to in the case of a drive failure as these utilities would run assuming the failed drive to be fully operational. Surprisingly, another important cause of data loss is human error, accounting to about 32% of data loss cases. Improper handling of drives or even accidental deletion of system files in an attempt to free space on drives or clean up the PC can cause severe repercussions. Attempting installations or repairs without experience or knowledge can often cause these problems, in which case back ups are the most reliable option. When I learnt of this problem, I began to regret the times when I had run such utilities in such situations, further causing damage to the drives and had to end up replacing them altogether and losing data permanently without having the slightest clue that I had worsened the situation. Software bugs however, are unavoidable as we would not know of the flaws in the design of the softwares we use. It is the third most common cause for data loss, accounting for about 14%. These problems may occur even when the software functions perfectly, which means it will affect other areas of hardware or platforms. On most occasions, these problems will generate error messages such as "the data is inaccessible" or corrupted. The only way to handle software bugs is to first identify the problem software and to contact the designers to provide patches and upgrades to eliminate the problem. Overwriting of data control structures and power surges to physical data storage devices, failure of software upgrades can all cause data loss. (seagate.com, 2012). Much to my surprise, viruses which can cause data loss, only account to about 7% of all data loss, which means anti-virus vendors exaggerate the effect that viruses can have on data. The daily downloads and constant internet access subjects the PC to thousands of viruses, and it is important to invest in an antivirus package to ensure safety. If a machine is infected by viruses and worms, a spyware, hardware, this can be deadly and result in corruption or loss of data. (divinekonection.info). Having learnt of the problems accountable for data loss, I studied further to find out how I can protect my drives and data, which was the main reason I was researching the subject. Protecting drives and data: Although it might seem a bit pessimistic, hard drives are bound to fail eventually, which means the concern is not if the drive would fail or not, the concern is when. The life of a drive can be improved by taking precautions, just the way that our health can be improved by eating healthy and exercising. All computer systems go through hang-ups form time to time, when programs stop responding, software ceases to run, commands do not work and it would seem like computer is going on strike. This problem is primarily due to buggy software although hardware faults can also cause such problems. In contrast to how I have handled this situation several times before, I learned that turning off the PC in such cases was not the best thing to do. It was more important to correct the problem and regain system control. In the case that a particular process ceases to respond while other processes are still accessible from the task bar, it would be wise to close down all other problems before shutting down, which will minimize damage as far as possible. Pressing Alt-Ctrl-Del is another option, which will open task manager, enabling us to close all programs manually, without having to power off the PC. Rebooting the system, although will cause loss of data, is perhaps the only option left when the system remains to be stuck and does not respond to attempts at terminating processes. In the case that the restart button does not function and it is not possible to open the shut down dialog, it becomes necessary to turn to the power button, in which case data loss will occur invariably. Another important part of drive maintenance, is keeping the drives clean, as with the large operating system currently at use, the internet downloads and programs, it would be very easy to fill drives with it. This also means that there could be a large amount of cache, temporary files, and trash which will keep unneeded information on the system, causing clutter and memory management problems, which in turn will affect the drives. Uninstalling unneeded applications, cleaning up the disk with disk cleanup, checking disk with ScanDisk and defragmenting the disk with Defragmenter are the ways to ensure that the drivers are clean and prevent loss of allocating units. It is important to check the environment of the drive every now and then, paying attention to noise, smoke, mounting screws, drive handling and vibration, as the way the hardware drives are mounted can have a profound impact on their overall reliability. (Bigelow, 2002). Drive formatting is commonly known and yet not used enough. I learnt that the effects of gravity and thermal expansion had an effect on head positioning and so it was important to make sure that the drive is in running temperature and fully functioning prior to partitioning and formatting. Recovering FAT and directory damage: File structure problems may be caused in drives due to viruses or even regular commands. Most operating systems have utilities to define the problems in File Allocation Table (FAT) and help in repairing these problems. CHKDSK and SCANDISK are two common disk utilities that can be very powerful and useful when studied. CHKDSK is used to process the disk and provide us with a detailed report on disk space and available memory. It inspects the FAT for discrepancies and contiguity. This means that when contiguous files can be relocated to occupy adjacent clusters on disk, loading and saving of files can be much faster. I learned that this is crucial for data loss as fragmented files may become disassociated or lost altogether, causing us to view an error massage when attempting to open the file, as part of the file may be missing. It helps greatly with recovering lost allocation units and freeing cross-linked files. SCANDISK is more powerful that the CHKDSK utility as it can perform all the operations of CHKDSK while also marking out portions on the drive which may be failing. It helps in identifying a large number of potential problems, while enabling us to foresee failing sectors and repairing them before we encounter the failure. Viruses such as CIH can destroy data backwards from partitions. In this case system data in the former part may be destroyed and lost. Usually we use Disk Edit and WinHex to recover data. (eases.com). References: Bigelow, S. J, 2002, Troubleshooting, Maintaining and Repairing PCs. McGraw Hill Companies. easeus.com, Retrieved Sep 2, 2012 from http://www.easeus.com/data-recovery-ebook/fat-table-recovery.htm seagate.com, 2012, Retrieved Sep 2, 2012 from http://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/data-loss-and-recovery-solutions-master-ti/ divinekonection.info, 2010. Retrieved Sep 2, 2012 from http://www.divinekonection.info/articles/10-Common-Causes-of-Data-Loss-a6.html Read More