Top 6 ways to fix a laptop
Even the latest and greatest laptops can fall victim to serious hardware problems. Today, we’re going to teach you the best 6 ways to fix any laptop.
Reset to factory settings
One of the most effective ways to fix a laptop is to restore it to factory settings. Although this deletes all of your personal data, it can also eliminate virus problems, old programs, and other useless data. While each laptop has a different way of being restored, almost all Windows laptops can be restored by inserting your Windows disk into the CD/DVD drive. Then, restart your computer and wait for the Windows Recovery menu to pop up. Follow the instructions on that screen to effectively restore your laptop to its factory default settings.
The exception to this rule is if you have a laptop without a CD/DVD drive. Say, a netbook. In this case, you will have to consult your netbook’s manual for further instructions. Or, if you want to, you can transfer the Windows recovery disk to a USB stick and then set the netbook to load from that device.
Solve overheating problems
One of the most common problems with laptops is overheating. Because of their small size and cramped architecture, many laptops suffer from overheating. This is especially noticeable when you’re running performance intensive tasks like video games or HD video.
To solve this problem, the first thing you need to do is dust out your laptop. Get a canister of compressed air and spray it inside the ventilation ducts on your laptop. Try to do this outside, as a lot of dust may be kicked up during this process. Spray the compressed air inside every ventilation duct you find in order to maximize your laptop’s cooling power.
Slow hard drive
As laptops fill up with data, they tend to slow down. This is particularly noticeable on older laptops, and it can be a painful and frustrating error to experience. To solve this problem, try running a disk defragmenter (Windows 7 has a decent disk defragmenter built in). Or, run a scan with PC Cleaner Pro to identity and eliminate junk files from your system.
Just because your hard drive is full doesn’t meant that it has to be unoptimized. By defragmenting your disk and cleaning up junk files, you can improve your hard drive’s performance and fix your laptop’s speed issues.
Shaky battery life
Another common complaint among laptop owners involves battery life. Some laptop batteries simply refuse to hold a charge, while others will only last for a few minutes before powering down. If you’re unsatisfied with your laptop’s battery life, then there is only one thing to do: buy a new battery. Unfortunately, due to the way many batteries are made, they degrade in power over time. There is no way to repair this problem. Instead, you simply have to buy a new battery.
Look at replacement batteries on your computer manufacturer’s website (like HP or Dell). There are also third-party laptop battery resellers that might be able to help you out.
Clicking sounds from the hard drive
Laptop hard drives aren’t always as reliable as their desktop counterparts. For that reason, you need to back up your files on a regular basis. If your hard drive has already started to click when it starts up, then it could be warning you of imminent hard drive failure. To be sure, transfer all of your data to an external hard drive or a cloud storage system and attempt to find a replacement hard drive.
Before you do that, you might want to check if your hard drive is indeed experiencing problems in the first place. Look under the support section of Hitachi’s website to find a number of helpful tools that will help you do just that.
If your hard drive does fail, then replacing it can be difficult on a laptop. However, it’s not impossible. If you don’t feel like learning the step-by-step guide to replacing a laptop hard drive, then you can always take it to a PC tech repair shop who will do it for you.
Bad keyboard
If you’re like most laptop users, then your keyboard takes a pounding. On lower end laptops, the keys on your keyboard will degrade over time. They may slip loose, become unresponsive, or simply loose the etching that signifies their letter.
Solving this problem isn’t as hard as you might think. Most PC manufacturers offer keyboard replacements on their websites, and installing these replacement keyboards is a relatively straightforward process.
To keep your laptop’s keyboard protected in the future, consider buying plastic keyboard protectors, which are typically available for under $15. These can extend the lifetime of your laptop keyboard without taking a dent out of your wallet.
