Section 4.2 - 4.9

Yesterday I spent an additional 3 and a half hours going over section 4.2 to section 4.9 for the tutorial videos. Chapter 4 focused on repairing and troubleshooting hardware, firmware, and software for a computer. 4.2 started off with tools you would need to effectively troubleshoot a computer's hardware. One example the tutorial gave was a loopback plug, which is used to troubleshoot networking issues. The plug is inserted into an Ethernet port, and any signal that the computer directs outward will be sent back to the computer. Using specified software, the computer can then diagnose any problems with it's outgoing signals. 4.3 introduced tools needed to troubleshoot the hard drive specifically. For example, file recovery software can be used to recover deleted or lost files by rereading disk space that hasn't been rewritten (so you could essentially bring back a file that you deleted and emptied out of the recycling bin). 4.5 went over tools used for professional networking- such as crimpers and punch-down tools. Since the tutorial only described these physical processes, I looked over different youtube tutorials to fully understand these tools. 4.5 mostly reviewed commands that could be used to troubleshoot your network such as ipconfig, netstat, or nbtstat. 4.6 was one of the most useful sections for me personally. This section went over troubleshooting and recovering an operating system, and discussed tools like system repair disks, REGedit, the event viewer, system recovery, and safe-mode. I had been noticing that over the past week that my laptop's audio had severely dropped in quality, and I was ready to take it to an electronics store to service it, but after watching 4.6 I decided to use system recovery to restore my computer to a saved restore point in March. After using system recovery my audio was back to normal (and I therefore serviced my first computer). 4.7 discussed malware removal and quarantining, and what should be done to a PC when a virus infects it. 4.8 was about disassembling laptops for parts, cleaning, or upgrading. I will discuss this in another blog post, since I decided to scrap my old laptop for parts to complement this section. Lastly, 4.9 went over maintaining laser printers, and what to do if a printer is not responding (most of the time the "printer spooler" service in the computer just failed). After watching the tutorial and taking notes for these sections, I finished with a total of 16 out of 25 hours for my Capstone project.