Computer not working properly?

Any providers/members with computer problems? I'm willing to take a look at your computer or diagnose your problem. I'm not asking for money.

I'm going into the IT field and could use some practice and I'm extremely bored right now! I just thought I would lend a helping hand to anyone that isn't computer savvy.

This is a free service because I'm not certified but given the simplicity of computers today it makes it relatively easy to fix them.

I know it's weird that someone would offer something for free, but I assure you I have no devious motives behind my offer.

Thanks everyone!

Any providers/members with computer problems? I'm willing to take a look at your computer or diagnose your problem. I'm not asking for money.

I'm going into the IT field and could use some practice and I'm extremely bored right now! I just thought I would lend a helping hand to anyone that isn't computer savvy.

This is a free service because I'm not certified but given the simplicity of computers today it makes it relatively easy to fix them.

I know it's weird that someone would offer something for free, but I assure you I have no devious motives behind my offer.

Thanks everyone! Originally Posted by Dirk182

Dirk, I applaud you for wanting to get into the IT field but please heed some advice, get certified first, hone the craft on your own equipment. I know they cost money but I know some places you can get some "scratch monkey" pc's to test things, learn more etc.

As it is because you are learning, should you work on someone's and screw it up, then what?


I have a few certs, and I have worked in the IT field for a number of years, a motto everyone agrees with is "behind every good IT person is a few dead pc's they killed in the learning process"


Get A+, then go for Desktop certified.... its a good solid foundation

If you really are a fledgling in the sense that you don't have some bench time already in an IT shop then I concur with Spirit13. Go get your A+ and MCDST certs. They should be extremely easy if you know what you're doing. Also in the mean time there are plenty of ways of getting your idle hands on something more real-world to stave off the boredom.

Go download a free copy of VMware Player or Oracle's VirtualBox and create some base images of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X, Ubuntu Linux, etc. Then clone those base images as you require for use as test environments.

Now f%^k 'em up however you wish and then fix it.

Go crawl through "free" gaming and porn sites. That should score you all sorts of fabulous malware and rootkits du jour to infect your test systems. Now spend some more of that free time trying to clean those systems by using your bootable OS discs and other utilities. Only rule is you have to clean it, don't format and re-install like some geek squad monkey.

Change the login password then reset them as if some client's kid or employee had changed it and now they need to get back in.

Use a hex editor to bork sectors of the disk images and then experiment with doing some data recovery.

Get the idea? ok. run with it. It really can prove to be a fun challenge and will also be a valuable skillset to have some experience with virtualization.

For playtime with hardware it seems like Spirit will pass you some leads.

Well I plan on getting A+ certified and getting CCNA certified. I'll take your suggestions and probably work with those as well. I have a practice desktop with Fedora installed on it so I'll get something going with that. Nothing too in depth because I want to stay a bit closer to the networking aspect of my degree.

I was going to do simple everyday stuff for the average person that is clueless about why their computer is slow. It's pretty easy to fix and it'll save someone from having to go to geek squad or a local guy that's going to rape their wallet.
Just trying to save some folks some money. Doing my good deed for the day. Ha! Yeah right! With all the bad things I've done it'll take me lifetimes to make up for it, but I can at least try.

Thanks for the advice guys.

My offer is still out there.

Anybody have a copy of Centos?

Moved to correct section.

Well I plan on getting A+ certified and getting CCNA certified. I'll take your suggestions and probably work with those as well. I have a practice desktop with Fedora installed on it so I'll get something going with that. Nothing too in depth because I want to stay a bit closer to the networking aspect of my degree. Originally Posted by Dirk182

If you are getting into networking then virtualization should be even more appealing. You can create both servers and workstations on one piece of metal that can run concurrently without having to own many physical systems. Create a full network on just one or a few desktops.

VMware server (still free) is pretty nice for that sort of testing. Then use Remote Desktop, VNC, and/or SSH to access your guests.

I like player & virtualbox for actual desktop/workstation use of other environments without requiring rebooting. You get better graphics acceleration and audio support with them.

In the least you should have a system setup for multiboot so you can work in various environments. Its just more of a hassle to have to reboot or to repair something when you mess something up.

Anybody have a copy of Centos? Originally Posted by Dirk182

http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/isos/

Quicker and cheaper than you could drive or buy gas to get to/from Baytown.

I tend to use CentOS as well for my all my production Linux servers. Very stable.

hi dirk 182 my comp is a piece of shit. you are heaven sent! I had a bad driver so I reuploaded xp....it had problems uploading several files and asked if I would like to cancrl or skip. I skipped these files, now my comp repeatedly shuts off and on...and does nothing else. What should I do, I would like to throw it in the trash but there are alot of photos I would like to try to recover