Minworth I.T.

Hi Everyone,

Still doing an occasional job if it’s not urgent or have time at the weekends, this was just a dead power supply so basically a straight swop.

Hi Everyone,

Due to family commitments I will be temporarily closing the business for an unknown period, hopefully in the future I will reopen. Thanks to all my customers and everyone for their support.

Kind regards

Nick

Hi Everyone,
A couple of interesting jobs last week involving motherboard repairs, The first one an Acer laptop wasn't turning on or showing any lights when plugged into the charger.The second was a lenovo laptop which would play a musical tone upon starting but that was it the laptop appeared to start but no signs of life.
Back to the Acer after examining the motherboard and testing with a multimeter it was determined the charger IC chip was to blame for the troubles along with a 10 ohm resister these are shown in the pictures, after ordering and resoldering the parts the laptop was good again.
The Lenovo was a different story, the musical tone in fact is a error code that can be translated by downloading a app from Lenovo.
That particular error code related to a problem with the TPM chip on the board which handle the security features on the board by encryption and stores the hard drive bitlocker keys etc. Basically without this the board needs replacing luckily a board was availiable for a good price.
Fitted the new board, luckily bitlocker was disabled on the drive so it was pretty straight forward.
Thanks everyone for your continued support on Facebook and Google etc.👍

Hi Everyone,
Finally got to put a post up! This time an Acer all in one PC not the best kind of PC but people have them, they have issues like all other devices so they need repairing and that's where I come in!
Anyway this particular PC had no power to the motherboard at all the issue being the power pack had blown and taken out the motherboard itself after diagnosing the board it was clear that the PCH chip was dead, now these are a replaceable but its getting one that is of a good quality and works!
In the end decided that for the cost of a motherboard it would work out about the same cost so one was ordered from a well known Chinese website and two weeks later it arrived.
After fitting the board and ordering another power pack then running diagnostic tests it was ready to be returned to the customer.

Hi everyone,

Another PS5 in this week just a quick SSD install, the PS5 I think has around 667 GB of internal storage which is not a great deal considering the size of game files these days plus all the saved games, video clips, photos etc!
The installation isn't difficult you just need a compatible Gen 4 PCIe NVMe drive and they are not cheap if you go for a 4TB drive like the customer you're looking at £300 plus!

Another laptop repair this week, this one had a charging issue, turned out to be a broken charging port so new part ordered and the old one removed.
Replaced the charging port re-assembled the laptop and all was working again, apologies for the poor picture of the new port in place.

Hi Everyone,
Customer dropped in an Xbox Series S with a broken HDMI port, the customer had attempted to remove the port and repair it themselves, actually they had removed the port not too badly as they are a bit of a nightmare if you don't know how.
the next stage was to clean up the area and prepare for the new HDMI port after that a re-thermal paste of the cpu.
Atfter a final test in 1080p and 4k all was well.

Hi Everyone,

Had a HP laptop with a broken screen to fix, pretty straight forward repair just order a new screen then remove and refit.
You will notice plenty of pictures of the hinges etc this is to make sure the cable routing is correct as if not it could result in a stretched or broken display or wifi cable.The only thing about this repair is the screen was held in by double sided tape and not screws which is common now on new laptops can be awkward to remove on some but this one thankfully was fairly simple.

Hi Everyone,

Had a gaming PC in that the customer was having problems getting it to show a display to the monitor after upgrading their graphics card.
The graphics card in question was a very nice MSI RTX 4070 going from a GTX 1060 which in performance terms is a huge leap!
Also the customer would like his processor a AMD Ryzen 7 1700x to a Ryzen 7 5800x.
After making enquiries about the custmers power supply I was told it was a Aerocool 600w psu which itself being resonable would not be adequate for the powering of a RTX 4070 which the minimum requirement is 650w also there is only on PCIe express cable from the original psu, the card has two power sockets, its not wise to use one cable for two slots as this limits the power draw to the card.
The customer after being advised purchased a Corsair RM850x which is well up to the task.
Another issue was the bios need to be updated otherwise the new processor would not be recognised.
After these processes and the installation of the new hardware all was well, a very nice upgrade to the customers system should be very happy indeed!
The customer has been advised to upgrade the momory on the PC as AMD cpus like higher ram clock speeds.

Hi Everyone,
Had a laptop in for repair that booted up but no display on the screen. The customer told me it had been dropped but also landed in the dog bowl!
Unfortunately water and electrical devices do not get on too well, not only the fact of blowing components in the device but water in constant contact with electricity, the battery for instance causes very rapid corrossion.
On stripping down the laptop I found corrosion around the display connector as a starting point a good cleanup was in order, after cleaning up the connector and the cable to the screen thought a reassembly and a test to see if the screen came on luckily if did so no major damage to the laptops components.
Reassembled the laptop after re-thermal pasting the processor and a check over the rest of the motherboard including the back to make sure no other damage was present.
In all the customer was very lucky the HP laptop did a pretty decent job of keeping out most of the water.

Hi Everyone ,
Picked up a spares or repairs Xbox one controller that the buyer said had left hand stick drift, which indeed it did as in the pictures the left hand stick jams over to the one side on Windows calibration tool the stick was of to the one side the stick would also jam to the one side also.
Went on eBay and ordered a couple of replacement analogue joysticks, might as well replace both as the other may fail any time soon!
Stripped down the controller removed the old sticks then resoldered the new ones, fitted it back together and all done, works a treat now for probably half the cost of a new one.

Hi Everyone,
Had a gaming pc dropped off with the owner having a problem with a new graphics card install, the problem being the existing power supply didn’t have enough power cables for the graphics card. Luckily the PSU was a semi modular design which means that another power cable could be added, these usually are supplied with the PSU unfortunately the customer no longer had the box and cables but eBay to the rescue!
Another issue that needed attention in trying to fit the card the customer had snapped the hard drive plug off the hot swap bay so that could no longer be used but all that need to be done was to move the drives to another bay.
Also noticed the two NVMe drives had been secured with the mounting post without a screw being used into the post itself so the drives were secured properly with a couple of the correct screws.
The customer asked me to install the new card a Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3070ti a very nice graphics card which was carried out but the customer would fit the power cable as it had not arrived yet, after a quick clean up inside and some cable management all was well!

Hi everyone,
Last week a customer dropped in a pad for me to have a look at, the issue a broken USB C port which is a problem as the pad could not be charged or connected to other devices.
Repairing pads and phones isn't my usual line of work as they can be very tricky also phones are just to small for me to work on the components are just to small even with a microscope! Whilst on the subject of pads, Apple why do you make things so hard to repair? Why so much double sided adhesive on your screens that takes an hour or so to remove?
Anyway luckily this was not a main stream brand and was simple to open up to get to the mainboard only thing I had to de-solder the speakers and mic cables from the board but not an issue, a new USB C port was ordered the old one removed, new port soldered in everything then reassembled.
Device charged up ok and started up all was good, as I said this is not my usual type of work but the pad was very simple to open up and work on unlike some mainstream brands :(

Hi Everyone,
Laptop repair today, customer dropped it off with a broken usb port, luckily it was the side that had a separate board that could be removed otherwise it a bigger job would have been called for as the motherboard needed to come out then desolder and re-soldering of a new usb port!
New part has been installed and all working well.

Hi Everyone
Customer dropped in a PC that gave a message Reboot and select proper boot device.
The problem was solved fairly easily fortunately although it's a major problem for the customer if your not computer savvy, The small coin battery had gone flat (have marked it in one of the pictures), causing the settings in the cmos chip to be lost when unplugged.
The cmos chip stores all information about what hardware is on the motherboard itself and hardware connected such as hard drives etc also all the settings relating these it as well, all these are accessed through whats called a bios which is basically a list of setting that can be changed, there is more to it than this but you're probably asleep now : D
The solution was just to change the battery and alter the settings in the bios to relate to the correct drive on the system, as the customer told me it had'nt be started up for 6 months I ran some scans to make sure all was ok in Windows.
This was a simple fix but can cause major headaches!

Hi Everyone

Just a quick update, back working now, feeling better still have more scans and tests to go but other than that recovering well.
Thanks for your support Nick

Hi everyone,

Sorry not posted for a while had sepsis and then found out I’ve a condition called diverticulitis, finally out after twelve days in hospital but will be out of action for a while.
Cheers

To all my customers and people who have supported me this year Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Thank you.

Hi Everyone
Had a Gaming PC in that would not give a picture it powered up but no picture out to the monitor.
First thing was to remove the bios battery to reset the bios just on the off chance of a bios problem, but no picture still. Then removed the ram and tried another slot but no good still.
The processor in this PC is a intel i5 4650 luckily has built in graphics so plugged in the HDMI to the onboard connector and got picture out next step was to try a known good graphics card in the PCIe slot to make sure the motherboard graphics slots were good and yes both were fine, suspected the AMD R7 370 graphics card was dead so tried it in a test pc it was completly dead, i stripped it down to repaste the GPU just in case of overheating but it was a long shot and did not work.
Contacted the customer and they managed to get hold of a second hand card which was a Nvidia GTX 1070 a much better graphics card noticed when the customer dropped it off it was full of dust so stripped it down cleaned it and repasted the chip it's always worth doing as it saves any issues later and only takes a small amount of time also as good measure cleaned and repasted the processor for the same reason.
Booted up fine ran some stress tests and all good, tempratures were fine too.

Hi Everyone,
Customer dropped of a HP Notebook with a problem of shutting down after a while also the laptop would not charge when it was actually running.
After a quick look at the charger port found out the plastic centre piece that holds the copper wires in place had snapped off preventing proper contact with the charger which after a quick voltage check was good. The battery also came under suspicion too as I don't think it was holding the charge so both parts were ordered if the original battery was fine then I could return the new one.
Both parts were fitted after discovering the original battery was not charging everything worked so laptop fixed.

Hi Everyone,
Another PC build done for a customer, this was a nice build, found the case on a good deal, really like it.

The specifications are,
Processor: Intel i5 12400F 6 Core 12 Thread 2.5GHz Base Speed 4.4GHz Boost Speed
Motherboard: MSI Pro Z690-A Pro WiFi
Ram: 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance RGB 3600MHz DDR4 Memory
Hard Drive: Crucial P2 1TB NVME SSD
GPU: Zotac Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070Ti Trinity
Power Supply: Corsair TX850M 80 Plus Gold PSU
Cooling: Corsair H100x AIO Liquid Cooler
Case: Lian Li Lancool II ARGB Midi Tower Case
Operating System: Windows 10 64 bit

Enjoyed building this system its a great mid range gaming PC with lots of upgrade potential.

Hi Everyone
Had a laptop in for repair last week that a customer had an incident and damaged the lcd screen, just thought I'd post some pictures to show what's involved, this was fairly straight forward as it had a screw in screen and the bezel surrounding it was actually not double sided to the panel itself. Most of the new laptops have double sided tap holding the bezel and screen in, there is a price to pay for slim laptops. :(

Hi Everyone,
A customer dropped off a PC a week or so ago wanting an upgrade to a gaming PC they bought, overall, it wasn't too bad a PC but needed a good clean and a couple of tweaks, the original specs were,
Intel i5 4770 processor with a stock cooler
MSI MS 7826 motherboard
16GB RAM
MSI Geforce GTX 1660 Super Ventus XS
Corsair CV 550 power supply
240 GB SanDisk SSD
2TB Seagate ST2000 HDD
Corsair Spec 05 case
I discussed with the customer the best possible upgrade path without going over what the PC would be worth to sell on if that were the case, we decided on a better motherboard an Asus Q87-E-M and an aftermarket CPU cooler namely a Cooler Master 212 EVO which will give way better cooling than the stock cooler!
After fitting the parts and a good clean up I ran some stability and benchmarking tests (I ran before upgrade tests too.) there was a slight performance boost with the new parts but mainly a 20 degrees C drop in CPU temperatures.

Hi Everyone,
This is a Gaming PC I built for a customer a few weeks ago, they asked me to put together a PC that wasn't entry level but also not an obscene amount of money, with room for upgrades later on should the need arise.
The specifications are

Intel i5 12400f 6 core 12 thread processor
MSI Pro Z690-P Motherboard
16 GB Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR4 RAM
1TB Crucial P2 M.2 NVME SSD
Corsair TX850M Power Supply
Gigabyte GC-WB1733D-1 Dual band WiFi card
DeepCool AK400 Air Cooler
Corsair 220T Case
Windows 10 Pro 64 bit operating system

After building I ran stability and benchmark tests, I was pretty impressed with the results.

Hi Everyone
Haven't posted in a while, Covid got in the way, nevermind!
Had a customer a few weeks ago drop off a desktop PC that would not post, basically it would power on but there would be no output to the screen!
First thing to do is to try and replicate the problem that the customer is experiencing, connected everything up and turned the machine on, it did boot straight into the bios, things like this can and do happen, if you change a component in your system if it does not boot up straight away sometimes you can panic a bit and things just go downhill, then whatever you do nothing works, been there myself :).
The customer was informed that all was well but they asked me if I could check the monitors that were plugged into the system just to make sure all was ok which thankfully they were fine!
The customer also asked if I could supply and install Windows onto the drive as they could not install it as they could not start the system.
After installing, updating loading relevant system and graphic card drivers I ran some stability testing and benchmarking test, the system was stable and ran pretty good, also tidied up the cables too just to make it look nice.
As to the problem I think it was probably just an output problem to the monitor, one was a display port the other was hdmi, the display port monitor only worked when the graphics drivers were installed if the system was trying to initialize that first maybe that could have been the problem, although I doubt it it should still work but display port monitors can throw up this problem from time to time, anyway all was well in the end