At Fireytech one of the most rewarding aspects of our mobile computer repair Tulsa business is repeat customers. We have many customers who have been with us for 15 years. The following computer repair Tulsa story is from one of our customers who came to us in 2017. She had bought a new Dell laptop and docking station and her Outlook files were not syncing as they should. We were able to get her up and running quickly. Then in December of 2018 she called us to resolve an issue with that same computer. Her Outlook file became corrupt and while trying to resolve that issue, her computer had stopped loading into Windows and was in a perpetual loop trying to repair itself and then saying it couldn’t. This began a very frustrating and yet rewarding computer repair.
I arrived at her house a couple of days after Christmas and found that the computer was as she said. It would not load into Microsoft Windows. Her Dell had Windows 10 installed so I went into the advanced setup options and attempted to run prior restore points and even a basic re-install with no success. After various attempts, I realized we were going to have to completely re-load Microsoft Windows to provide a successful mobile computer repair Tulsa.
Once I had her Dell Laptop at the depot, I started with some hardware tests. Any time a computer crashes suddenly with no warning you want to be sure that the hardware is not the cause. I was suspicious of the hard drive or the ram since Outlook had suddenly become corrupt and the computer had no usable restore points. I ran the built-in Dell hardware diagnostics. The ram, hard drive, cpu, and video all passed. I proceeded to run a backup of her data onto an external drive and then re-loaded Microsoft Windows 10 using a Dell Windows 10 DVD we keep for repair purposes. The nice thing about Dell machines, and one reason we recommend customers purchase them, is that their install disks can be used on any Dell computer that has the same operating system originally installed on it. Most other brands of computers require a disk that is specific to that particular computer. Most customers don’t keep track of their disks and, many times, new computers don’t even come with the disks. The other brands expect the end user to burn off a copy of the restore disks themselves. I have found in my years of mobile computer repair Tulsa experience that most customers don’t know how or simply never take the time to actually do this.
After I had re-installed Microsoft Windows 10, I delivered the computer back to her and we went through the process of re-installing her individual programs, her printer, her online Carbonite backup, and connecting the Dell laptop to her home wireless network. We also set up her Outlook to sync and everything looked and worked great. I also made sure the computer was making restore points to avoid this if there should ever be an issue in the future.
Everything worked perfectly for a few weeks and then suddenly, the Dell laptop suddenly froze and when she rebooted began acting the exact same way it had before our previous computer repair Tulsa. Since we had just performed a new install of Windows 10, it seemed very unlikely to be a software issue. I re-ran tests on the memory and hard drive and they still passed. We ordered a new hard drive for her even though it had passed hard drive tests. Her hard drive was actually flash memory instead of a standard hard drive so we questioned whether the hard drive tests were something we could rely on. I also exchanged her ram memory just to be sure as well.
We received the new flash memory hard drive in 2 days (thank you Amazon Prime). We went through the entire reload process again but since she had an online Carbonite backup (and I still had a copy of her previous backup) we didn’t waste time on the backup step. Again we got her computer up and running and she was back to work. Then, just a few weeks later the computer crashed yet again! We were pulling our hair out. There was no virus and we had eliminated all the standard hardware problems. We suspected it could be a deeper issue with the cpu or motherboard but we really didn’t want to keep having her business at a stand-still and her computer going up and down while we tested. We began to think replacing the computer may be the best solution. For her, time was money and she was loosing business every hour she was down.
Out of desperation, we tried one more thing. We began researching her specific Dell model online to see if there were any other people with the same issue. There were several articles but nothing really specifically about this issue. We finally called Dell to see if they had any ideas. They asked if we were using the original Dell restore DVD that was shipped with the machine. We almost dismissed this as a possibility because we have used our generic Dell disks on countless machines and it’s never presented a problem. The Dell remote tech insisted he thought the original restore disk would resolve the issue. Of course, she couldn’t find it. The very helpful Dell tech referred us to look up her service tag number on their website and, on the drivers page, there was a link to download the Windows 10 operating system for her laptop. We downloaded it and again reinstalled Windows 10 with our fingers crossed. After that reload, the computer hasn’t failed and I’m writing this article months after.
Most of the time, a Fireytech excellent mobile computer repair Tulsa service call can go so smoothly and routine that we are in and out in an hour with complete success. This was one of those rare times that we were left scratching our heads and that Dell support rep got us the answers we needed. I tell customers all the time, we can’t know every possible thing about every possible computer. On complex issues, our work is more about understanding how to research than it is about first hand knowledge. This customer was very patient with the process and in the end we resolved her issue and we kept checking back with her every week or so to make sure the computer was still running happily. A rewarding repair in the end but wow was it a journey.
If you need a high quality mobile computer repair Tulsa, please call Fireytech today at 918-258-FIRE (3473). We love to make the complex become simple.