PB-1.0

Hands-on Advanced PC Troubleshooting

Objectives Prerequisites Who should attend Course Outline Hands-on Sessions

Enhance your proven troubleshooting skills and become confident about PC upgrades. Additionally you will:

• More easily identify and fix common failures
• Comprehend hard disk intricacies
• Troubleshoot all major PC components
• Effectively use diagnostic tools
• Employ effective troubleshooting techniques
• Keep out of trouble when upgrading

You should have good general troubleshooting skills, no fear of the PC environment and an understanding of DOS. You should be able to use the basic tools of the trade and know binary, hexadecimal and digital logic. The prerequisite for this course is our Hands-on PC Troubleshooting course.

You could have a title or position such as: PC Support Manager, PC Service Technician, Systems Engineer, Help Desk Manager, LAN Administrator, PC Analyst, Operations Manager, Support Manager or Support Analyst.

Revision of PC architecture

• Basic computing concepts
• Overview of PC operation
• Major component functions

Microprocessor technology

• Intel family of CPUs and their specifications
• Review of CPU families
• Pentium (586) specifications
• Non-Intel CPUs
• Upgrade paths for CPUs
• BIOS upgrades
• CPU sockets
• Pentium-Pro (686)
• Intel Multimedia Extensions (MMX)
• Latest CPU releases

System architecture

• 8/16-bit ISA bus
• 32-bit bus systems
• PC Card (PCMCIA) bus
• IRQ and DMA concepts

System resources

• Adaptor cards and I/O devices
• Device drivers
• Software and hardware interrupts
• Sequence of IRQs
• Troubleshooting IRQ conflicts
• DMA transfers and conflicts
• I/O addressing and conflicts
• Plug-n-Play technology
• Using POST diagnostic tools and logic probes

System memory

• Physical and logical memory
• Memory areas and usage
• Upper memory conflicts
• Memory management, cache and diagnostics
• Analysing memory status
• Virtual memory

Disk drives

• Magnetic storage principles
• Floppy disk drives and interfaces
• Hard disk drives
• FAT and directory structure
• Master Boot Record (MBR)
• Fixing damaged MBRs
• Hard disk interfaces
• Data encoding methods - MFM, RLL
• Installation, cables and configuration
• Common drive problems
• Improving performance with a disk cache
• Doubling the disk capacity
• Partitioning strategies
• CD-ROMs including CD-R, CD-I
• How tape drives work
• Magneto-optical drives
• Fixing lost file system and cross linked clusters

I/O ports

• Data transfer requirements
• Parallel port operation
• Communications port, RS-232C standards
• Universal Serial Bus (USB)

Peripherals

• Keyboard testing
• Monitors
• Advanced video adaptors
• Power supplies and testing
• Modem installation and configuration

Multimedia

• How multimedia sound works
• How multimedia video works

System upgrading

• Memory expansion and memory management software
• Disk drive upgrades
• Floppy disk drive upgrades
• Adding system components

DOS

• Advanced DOS setup features
• DOS 6.22 features
• Doublespace, Smartdrv and Ramdrive

MS-Windows

• Telling Windows about your upgrade
• Fine tuning Windows
• Win95 and system configuration

Advanced troubleshooting

• Hardware vs software problems
• Operating system considerations
• Resident software conflicts
• Shell environments and MS-Windows
• Application software problems
• Basic troubleshooting tips
• Preventive Maintenance (PM)
• Diagnostic tools
• Handling intermittent problems
• Last ditch fixes
• When all else fails
• Enhanced virus recovery

Damaged data

• Recovery of deleted and damaged data

Printers

• Basic font theory
• How dot matrix, ink jet and laser printers work

System configuration

During this session you will explore important technical aspects of the PC.
! Hard disk configuration in CMOS setup  ! System configuration

Investigating the CPU

Investigate the finer technicalities of the CPU operation.
! CPU project ! Using a multimeter and logic probe

Diagnosing the system integrity

From system initialisation learn advanced techniques to test system integrity.
! Power On Self Test (POST) ! Using a POST monitor card ! Diagnosing a faulty motherboard ! Fine tuning config.sys and autoexec.bat ! VLSI chipset configuration  ! Using BIOS defaults

Resolving configuration conflicts

Discover how to identify and resolve those annoying “conflict” problems.
! Recording current resource configuration ! Resolving IRQ conflicts    ! Using Discovery card ! Resolving DMA conflicts ! Resolving I/O address conflicts

Examining system memory and bus signals

Explore memory operation and bus signalling.
! Memory configuration/layout ! Upper memory usage ! Latest memory management   techniques ! Analysing ISA bus signals

Investigating disk drives

Learn advanced techniques to identify and resolve disk problems.
! Diagnosing floppy drive interface signals ! Hard drive configuration ! Preparing HDD for use ! Using disk compression ! Use of DOS diagnostic tools ! Examining DOS disk format

I/O port testing

Investigate I/O port diagnostics.
! Parallel port testing ! Serial port testing  ! Troubleshooting handshake problems

General maintenance and installation issues

Review general maintenance tasks.
! Keyboard testing ! Monitor testing and adjustments ! Power supply testing ! Installing a CD-ROM drive ! Installing a modem ! Preparing an upgrade plan