The uptime is showing as 384 days. For starters I’d be doing a reboot instead of doing a shutdown. If it hasn’t restarted in that time, it won’t have completed any software updates. Shutdowns and restarts are different now. Restart and then more ram before cloning to an Ssd.
That little switch contact transitions the audio from internal to external speakers. Just a suggestion, after you put the grommet on and before you soldered it you might put a small knot in the wire on the inside of the box or put a small piece of heat shrink tubing to keep it from being pulled out
For the Joyce laptop it would be worth checking the free disk space. Windows will sulk and run slowly if it doesn’t have a fair percentage of free space.
win10 has high resource requirements. 4GB won't be enough. I noticed an empty ram slot in that last laptop. It may also be trying to use the hdd for storing memory from the ram, hence the drive being written to so often. The OS also runs a lot of data collection in the background. Checking the manufacturer for any updates to firmware or chipsets can help too.
You need to create a Ventoy USB stick with Ubuntu on it. Once you saw Windoze running like crap, you could have booted off the Ventoy stick and then seen Ubuntu running normally and then you would have known it was either a hard drive issue or Windoze was borked.
From the title I thought this was going to be a masterclass in how to make money from electronic repairs! Instead it's a great compilation of you fixing things! :)
For the sound, .. as a last resort .. you can use a usb sound dongle (they’re quite inexpensive). I upgraded the ram on my Lenovo to 8Gb (swapped out both SODIMMS), and swapped the HDD to a 480Gb SSD. It works better now than it ever did before.
Seems like a Linux install image on a USB stick might make life seem worth living sometimes. Ubuntu, for instance, has a mode where nothing gets installed on the computer but you can boot into a desktop, listen to music, play videos, surf the internet and etc.
9:46 - I’ve been 100% successful at repairing such damage by cracking the case in a bench vice (just like a walnut!) and resoldering the cable to the board inside. Reuse the strain relief or locate a similar one, a little cyanoacrylate glue an Viola! Done! A very handy skill for repairing oddball wallwarts that are not so easily replaced.
On the slow cpu with the power plan you can change options in it and set max & min cpu speed, select power options then change plan settings then change advanced power settings , then processor power management and check the max processor state
Agree, also my idea that the power plan settings are screwed up. Had a performance problem with an quote old used VAIO i5 Laptop, upgraded to Win 10 prof home editition. I kept that upgrade installation but added the original Win 7 64bit. Tweaked the power plan so the laptop runs well again. Expanded RAM to 8 GB and changed 750 GB WD HDD to a 500 GB SSD. Added a Q4OS Linux (Debian Bookworm) Windows installation on that Win 7 home premium NTFS file system. So I got a triple boot and I use that laptop on a day and nightly basis. One thing I still have to fix are presumably depleaded electrolytics for the sound amplifire, because the sound out of the build in speakers is quite terrible. Bzw. SONY completely deleted all support sites.
I think you should run crystal disk on his hard drive to check the health of it, I've had something similar with an older laptop where some sectors were bad but the computer would still run yet excruciatingly slowly.
ya spinning drives usually fail on the sectors where the operating systems are stored as they are read he most and I would at least check the health of that drive which I assume is a spinning rust drive. By default WIndows10 has Fast Startup enabled which means that Windows does not completely shut down but rather uses hibernation file to save info to help Windows start up faster. Along with 4GB of RAM and a celeron and a spining rust Hitachi hard drive. Min for Win10 is 8 GB RAM. Does it by chance have Avast orother malware running in the background?
I find Speedfan to be a quick test for internal HDDs to get the SMART values sent off to a website that interprets the data and gives a human readable appraisal of any out of range values. Obviously for drive testing Crystal Disk or VictoriaHDD are useful.
For the 3.5" socket , I would just fit a cheap USB DAC about £3-5 . The slow Lenovo is way more likely to need a new OS install, plus an SSD and +4GB , the owner probably hasn't let it update properly in years so it's got a borked OS.
For the slow laptop, I'm sure you checked the usual suspects (disk space, swap space, defective memory etc) and why are basic apps taking forever to appear in task bar. Maybe trying to update something over Internet, too many unused open apps (shutdown unnecessary services), defective device drivers etc. An anti-virus from hell trying to load.
Hardware diagnostics is first step. If mechanical platter disc drive, always run drive test before doing any software uninstall/reinstalls. My worse analogy is this one. The tire keeps going flat. Customer: "I keep adding air but it is flat again." Mechanic: "Did you check the tire for a leak by spraying soapy water on it and looking for bubbles?" Customer: "No I just keep putting air in it. Do you think that might be the problem?"
JSYK, for gluing those PSU plastic cases together, I've been using T-7000 (yeah, the cell phone screen stuff) and it has been working great! Regarding the CPU issue, I've noticed that it's throttling the clock a lot. A test that may be worth doing is to disable Intel SpeedStep in the BIOS. The battery is going to drain faster, but the performance must improve.
As you say the Lenovo would benefit from a 4GB RAM upgrade and an SSD swapout. You could clone the old HDD to the SSD preserving his programs and it should run a lot better.
The main issue with doing a clone is it won't fix the speed. This is because if you look at any PC that has this same issue the registry will usually be over 1GB in size. It's continually accessed so the larger it gets the slower it gets. You can't fix it with an SSD and more RAM. The only way is remove the HDD and keep it as a backup and put in a new drive with a fresh OS install. If you're going with Win11 you should at least use that app to clean up the built-in spyware and disable os updates otherwise in a year it will kill itself again hehe!
On some PCs you may find that the manufacturer's declared maximum ram is 4GB (not this machine, it has an empty memory slot). However, manufacturers have to assume that the ram you will fit is 1Rx8 (1 row x 8 bits), often listed on the ram stick. In actual fact, the maximum stated is PER BANK. If you fit ram which is 2Rx8 then you can usually double the manufacturer's declared maximum. It is marginally slower than 1Rx8 because it has to switch between memory banks but it is a lot faster than the alternative "virtual ram" which is really using the disc as ram. I've done it many times and haven't failed yet. Of course, if you try that on a 32-bit machine it will still only use about 3GB but that's not the case here. Unless stated otherwise the memory controller has to be able to handle 2Rx8 memory so it must be able to perform bank switching. The next thing to do is upgrade windows 10 to the latest version. This will effectively re-install windows. Unlike previous versions of windows it generates a new copy of the registry so there is no need to start from scratch. Unfortunately in some cases the upgrade just will not complete in which case a fresh install will be necessary. Finally, and it's something everyone should do, uninstall all the manufacturer's bloatware plus any software you no longer use. In addition, stop software from loading at startup. The number of times I've heard "but I might use it" is crazy. People don't realise that the reason they have to wait 15 minutes for their PC to be ready to use is because they don't want to wait a few seconds when they actually want a particular program.
@@Dutch-linux Yep, malwarebytes is the first thing I run on EVERY machine that comes in. And windows10 on a physical HD is pure insanity, I bet that machine came with win8 originally - which means buy it, install win7 and never upgrade :D
There are probably all these issues going on here on such an old machine with an unknown history. For me, formatting and installing a new OS is mandatory. Which OS is a whole question in itself. Hopefully the customer can be convinced to install an SSD. It doesn't have to be fast or huge, but it needs to be reliable.
As far as reusing the flex boots I usually try and hollow them out. Sometimes running a drill bit through them so I can try and push the wires through them.
In the Lenovo maybe someone has limited the maximum processor speed because of fan removal. Check in power settings (power options-change plan settings-change advanced power settings-power options-processor power management-maximum processor state and 27%). Sounds crazy I know!, but would'nt take long to check.
"Windows update could have caused a problem." ... have been hearing that since the days or Windows 3! When it comes to this sort of problem, I give the PC to the local Asian PC Repair Shop. They tend to deal with such problems weekly if not daily.
Looks like there's a lot of stuff running in the background on that laptop or maybe the hard drive is full. Try going into the task manager and stop the unnecessary processes that are running and that should speed it up substantially. If that doesn't help, then defragment the hard drive and be sure to select recovery of bad sectors. May take all night but at least you can sleep while it's doing that. Hope this helps. Great videos. Keep them coming. I've learned a lot from watching your videos and enjoy them greatly.
Hi Dicky, just watched this video, great fix on the first machine, but the Lenovo was like watching paint dry, definitely a software issue, and from my experience in the computer world, ie laptops and desktops, it’s a long shot but I’m pretty certain, if it’s got Google (VIRUS) chrome, it conflicts against any other web browser, fully delete it, I’m sure it’ll run a lot faster.. just a suggestion, before anyone has any issues, great work mate. 🤙🏼🇦🇺 Joe from Australia 🤙🏼🇦🇺
Brill video Rich, well done, got an answer for you for why the Lenovo laptop ran on low-speed if you look carefully you'll see it run at 0.5Ghz which has something to do with power management when on battery will pull the speed down to min to prolong the battery and from what I saw you did not used its own charger and a makeshift one. Had similar probs with a MSI laptop when ran it on the battery will reduced speed to min, and when plugged in will ran max out.
ok, I don't know why Kenny Roger's song "Ruby, Don't take your love to town" when I saw this title. But sing it to the beat of that sound, ", Don't turn this work away".... ok, going back to my cell now.
Wonder if you can specify the brand of solder wick you used. All I see when looking on-line is the really thin stuff, but what you had was much thicker and removed the solder very well.
I'm enjoying your repair videos - thank you for sharing your process ☺️ That Medion (I think that's an Aldi brand?) laptop is going to have a return visit - a headphone socket in a bar environment is going to get a good amount of wear and tear (especially if the cable is just hanging out when it's in use. I wonder if some kind of breakout/docking unit might be helpful... but obviously that will limit the potential for a return visit in 6 months time...😁
Looks like that laptop CPU speedstep isn't working - stuck at 0.52GHz whereas on your test SSD it was switching up to max speed 2.12GHz.. There are some advanced speed limits that can be set in power management, but may be worth just a quick change from balanced to max performance just to see... Plus a data migration to SSD would definitely make a massive difference compared to an old, fragmented spinning rust drive :)
It may appear to help,but if, as I suspect, the problem is insufficient RAM causing excessive disk memory swapping, the swapping will continue, only it'll be a lot faster than to hdd. The fix for shortage of RAM and swapping is to add more RAM. As another commenter indicates, looks like there's a spare RAM slot
@@pjzz2000no way. If you look closer to the video - there's still headroom for the ram and c drive has 2/3 of free space which means additional ram or new hdd is waste of money and won't solve anything. He run win. from his drive and it run properly. Definitely it's software issue OR it might be hdd start to fail. First thing is to check hdd health (bad sectors) and winows files integrity. Malware wouldn't cap the cpu speed to 0.5 GHz. Windows reinstallation (or repair - there is such option) is the key here. Then checking hdd health PS. This laptop would benefit from SSD though. And yes, it would also mean fresh win install, so it would fix software issue 😂 but it is extra expense on an old laptop - is it worth it?
Memory usage in Windows is a complex subject. What you see is often confusing unless you know exactly how the operating system manages its virtual and physical memory. I guarantee that it is worth trying, as the first step, adding 4gb to the spare ram slot. If you don't do that first and then switch in an SSD, you will learn nothing about memory usage.
@@pjzz2000 the symptom is: cpu is capped at 0.5 GHz, no matter what the laptop was doing. Lack of ram wouldn't do that. Normally I would agree that it's worth checking (especially because HDD was loaded), but not in this particular case. CPU utilization would fluctuate. Also, when he plugged his drive with win (without adding RAM) - everything was fine. Giving a 2nd thought on it, if I would have to pick only one, the most probable cause, I would bet on win sys files corrupted (regardless if caused by bad sectors or just file corruption). File corruption just happens and depending on the particular file, wired things start to happen 😉 been there, seen that (couple of times) 😉
@mehow9521 CPU is not capped. Its current utilisation is 28%, running at 0.5ghz. CPU clock speed is normally determined by demand for CPU. A CPU can be either be, executing instructions or waiting for interrupts to complete,the key one being IO interrupts. (Disk reads/writes). So what happens is, when there is insufficient RAM, the sum total of the operating system memory requirements is bigger than the physical RAM, so pages of RAM memory keep having to be swapped out to disk, to make space in RAM for the next process to swap in its memory, ready to execute the next instruction. This is normal operating system design, but if there is too little RAM, this behaviour starts to cause severe performance problems. This is a classic case of shortage of RAM where the CPU is unable to do anything useful , hence low utilisation and lower clock speed. High IO is thwarting the CPUs ability to execute anything. Remember, IO is dramatically slower than CPU and memory activity. The CPU is ready and waiting to do loads of work....but it can't, because it is waiting on slow IO from HDD to swap in memory to RAM. The capping you see is because of the hdd activity. I also guarantee (as far as we ever can!) that if you switch to SSD, the CPU usage will increase drastically. There will be just as much IO, but it will be dramatically faster than swapping from hdd. CPU utilisation will increase, and with the increased usage, so will clock speed. The only thing is, that if you shove 4gb of memory in, instead of ssd, you will save money, time, complexity. Once you've seen that that corrects the performance problem, you can shove in an ssd as well for good measure. This will also certainly help both the operating system, especially boot time, as well as all applications. My suggestion is, always do the easiest, most obvious test first, before reaching more complex conclusions. Hope that helps.
The second laptop is a basket case. It appears that may be the original installation of Windows. In any case the machine is running a ton of unnecessary rubbish that is depleting the RAM. With only 4GB that doesn't take much. In task manager RAM was at 66% utilization and the machine wasn't even finished loading cruft yet. When a computer is very RAM-constrained, it will be occupied with reading and writing to the page file/virtual memory. An old laptop HDD is very slow, so the CPU has to wait for I/O to complete. Therefore it gets stuck at low utilization, while seemingly nothing much happens. You don't know the history of the laptop. Often such a machine has dozens of useless things that have been installed and forgotten that load up every time it's started, possibly including malware of all sorts. A good clean-out or reinstallation is in order. I also agree, another 4GB of RAM and an SSD will bring new life to this machine, making it decently usable for years to come.
That laptop is only good for some light version of linux, it has no business running win 10. 1 anemic core, 4gb of ram and a HDD. You can upgrade the ram/SSD but the CPU bottleneck will remain severe.
Yes, I still had an Atom-based HP 5103 Netbook laying around. That thing is only useable in a few ways: external terminal, photo frame or a music player ( with external speakers). Even with the lightest modern Linux installed on it, it still runs like a slug going uphill. The anemic processor is the main culprit here, since it has 4GB of RAM and an SSD.
Oh my Microsoft if a computer is a little older within 10 years put in an SSD with a Linux operating system like Zorin and it'll run great. I've been doing this to friends computers for years. Ubuntu, Cinnamon and other Linux OS will turn it around but I really prefer ZorIn as it has a feel of an older Windows product
43:00 I've had a laptop with a similar problem it was running only at 800 MHz that was because it had a broken trace from the input current sense resistor to the charge ic but then it had problem with charging also
I haven't totally finished watching this video... Which are working on the Lenovo that is running like a snail, look there could be a lot of problems that make this machine behave the way it does first off.. Mechanical hard drive but more importantly is the 4 GB of RAM along with the mechanical hard drive, also you need to spend time in figuring out what is tying this machine up it's doing something in the background like installing updates which would put a tremendous drag on the performance of this machine with the combination of 4 GB of RAM and mechanical hard drive, also the possibility of malware... There also could be other programs like antivirus stuff running which again with this type of machine and I also suspect it's a low-end machine meaning the power of the processor, but what I'm seeing is the machine is tied up in the background doing things I would let it sit until he calms down and then investigate things running the background, especially during startup, I know in general your familiar with computers and how they work but since I have quite a bit of experience with preparing computers, not so much in the hardware area which I don't see any indication that would explain the behavior of this machine. I hope by the end of this video which I've got probably 10 or 15 minutes left to watch that you will come to these conclusions that the hardware is okay, now we moved on to the software and what's tying up the machine you see the spinning circle... And the absolute hesitation when you request a function that's a direct indication that the machine is busy... And it's telling you wait a minute I'm already really busy and you want me to turn on the media player, and now you want me to turn on the task manager I'm busy doing possibly updates in the background... 🙂 SSD's are cheap, and so is RAM. Even when you get this machine running in proper order those are going to hold back the performance of this machine. Now I will finish watching the video.... I be not worried you will resolve whatever is going on with this machine in the end. P.S. so many machines I repaired in the past were low-end machines, I'm sure this is one of them. Look at the amount of RAM that is left for the machine to have shuffle space or working space, with 4 GB of RAM. P.S. also I just want to make you aware of an oddity that I stumbled upon years ago and that is in Windows 8 and above shut down is not like the shutdown in Windows 7, technically Microsoft wants you to do a restart, this will reset the Col. that's one explanation, I have been given many computers that do all sorts of goofy things, when over time the Col. never gets fresh restart, there is a way to change the behavior where shutting the machine off will actually shut it off, and the next time you turn it on the Col. gets reset. to correct what I'm speaking about the procedure kinda goes like this in the search bar type Power & Sleep Settings, then look to the left column, under related settings you will see in blue... " Additional power settings " click that, on the right side select " choose what the power buttons do" Then in the next box you will see... Turn on fast Startup, sleep, hibernate, and lock have a check mark in them but they are grayed out, there is a box labeled turn on fast start up it's grayed out, Too remove the check mark check mark in the box, look above for blue writing that says "change current settings that are not available" now remove the checkmark. This will remove past normal which is a small file used to speed up the process by holding onto past settings... Fortunately this workout a lot of Microsoft dates and things. And it only saved a second or 2 at the most in your boot up time, but when you install an SSD this becomes irrelevant. Anyways I hope my long explanation here is helpful to someone. I don't hear the problems with scrambled and misbehaving machines like I did years ago after discovering this anomaly created by Microsoft every machine my hands on turn that function off and unfortunately in a business sense I don't hear too many calls to resolve certain behavior issues in Windows.
High disk usage and low cpu appearing throttled, could likely be shortage of RAM. It maybe spending all its time swapping memory to and from disk. 4gb ram is not enough for Windows 10 et . Add new DIMM. At least you can then work with a laptop that works and focus on the audio
Life is too short for bogged down quirky PCs. If stopping processes didn't clear up a hiccup I'd boot Linux from USB and check if the switching to external speakers worked hardware wise. If there is a connection issue there I can imagine the PC getting hammered with interrupts?
The hard drive on that Lenovo has a bad sector and that's why it hangs and then all of a sudden works good because it can't read that part of the disc The best thing to do is put an SSD in it it will speed up the transfer of data by 10 times almost like having a new laptop.. I've seen this quite a bit when you first turned it on and a little dots stop turning I immediately said... bad hard drive
Just getting a SSD and an external doc or a USB stick then get Windows up and download Aomie backup then just do a clone of the internal drive or a disk image to the USB stick... when it's done take the unit apart put that ssd drive in it take the other one out and you're fixed it's the hard drive is too corrupt and it causes it not to be able to do it just have to do a clean install but you can try to save you know any of their stuff from the my documents and such folders
Another way to fix the audio jack is to just solder the switch in the always-enabled position. If they are using it in a bar and it's always connected to speakers and is used only for music the quick fix is to hard-wire the switch in the 'on' position and then you don't need to find and fit a new jack.
Very odd Lenovo behaviour. Reminds me of that song “I’m busy doing nothing..”. Anything relevant in the event log (disk retries, memory sync delays, ..)? Also, have they stuffed some duff memory in the pc or different performance from each module?
In case of that last laptop - honestly - I would tell the customer to buy a new laptop. It is totally outdated and it barely works for the single purpose he is using it. And is really worth upgrading a device with such a terrible CPU?
Lenovo need more memory and will be responsiv. The HDD works so hard because, due to lack of memory, the system writes data to the disk and constantly works on it. Using SSD is still the same process except that SSD is much faster. When adding memory, most of these operations will take place on RAM.
@36:58 no no Richard do not just re install windows ... remove the malware first that will do the trick re installing windows is a last resort never the first .... plus you got to back all music and things up first before re installing ... this time i really disagree with you on your thought process of this laptop
Windows is like the devil in angel clothes. If you don't do a clean install like every year, you'll end up with a bogged down version like this. Probably a spindle disk wich isn't even finished loading everything from when windows started. IO throttle from many years installing/uninstalling apps.. (system files etc still sometimes remain even after uninstall and shared libs etc are not deleted because of dependencies with other apps etc. After some years you have an OS that's spending most of it's time loading stuff it really don't need to load. Besides this you also probably have lot's of malware that's also hogging the IO. So if your'e a Windows user, you know that you always have to do a clean install every year🙂
Who the hell runs windows 10 on 4Gb..... quite insane, it's too hungry, these machines came with Vista or Win7 and they struggle at times with 12Gb of ram! Blue screens aren't too uncommon, it's almost as if Microsoft has hijacked anything they don't support any more lol Quick TIP Richard, go get Blackbird and install it on a USB, and run it, things speed up immensely after a run of this amazing proggy.
at 0:12 its a medion that is what is wrong with it I had one and it had to go back 3 times for warranty repairs with in tne first 2 months and after the warranty periode the battery blew case cracked and was the end of it .....
Here in Argentina we charge more money for this type of PC (celeron, sempron), the loss of time is very different than an I3 or Ryzen. And most people buy these laptops...it's new, it will be fast...mistake. I know that Lenovo, it comes with Windows 7 by default. You have to add a new SSD, 4 GB more RAM and a basic Win 10. And Tell the customer that this is all the machine can do, not to install sophisticated things. It is a laptop that today will only be able to do basic things, Word, Excel, some music or TH-cam.
You can indeed get these cable bend protection sleeves from the usual suspects. I wanted to link to one but my comment got auto-deleted by the almighty algorithm. Anyway, you can also use a few layers of heat shrink tubing to stiffen the cable a bit when it exits the charger. Cheap and simple. In regards to that slow laptop, keep in mind that ever since Win8 (IIRC), this "fast boot" thing is usually enabled by default. Meaning the computer doesn't really shut down when you shut it down. It only ends the user session and then goes into a suspend-to-disk mode. When you turn it back on, it resumes that suspended image and starts a new user session. The kernel and drivers never get re-initialised. If there's a problem with those, a shutdown and power-on cycle won't fix it. You must either do a real restart, or disable "fast boot" in the energy management settings. I'm not sure it would fix this particular issue but it's definitely worth keeping in mind because it's completely counter-intuitive.
For the slow laptop maybe suggest to the customer to install Linux. If it's only for music a lean version of Linux is all they need and because it's Linux it's secure so you don't need constant OS updates. One of my laptops is still running Kubuntu 8.10 and still runs as fast as it did when new heh!
yes I know .... malware run malwarebytes I bet you that it finds atleast 50 creepys or even way more .... do not format i get this stuff daily please Richard run malwarebytes
that laptop for sureeeeeeeeeeeeeeee need new windows install fresh from zero and replace normal HDD with SSD and it will play music ok. its trash lenovo trust me brother repaired 10s of them no fan low spec its just for music and you need yo install SSD and 8gb and pray to work good. (fixed dozen of same model .... and they are pure trash for listening music from USB or SSD and that's it not even watching good quality video it start freezing.... trust...
The uptime is showing as 384 days. For starters I’d be doing a reboot instead of doing a shutdown.
If it hasn’t restarted in that time, it won’t have completed any software updates. Shutdowns and restarts are different now. Restart and then more ram before cloning to an Ssd.
That little switch contact transitions the audio from internal to external speakers. Just a suggestion, after you put the grommet on and before you soldered it you might put a small knot in the wire on the inside of the box or put a small piece of heat shrink tubing to keep it from being pulled out
Create a strain relief.
16:30 What I normally do with replacement cables is tie a knot in the cable and put the knot on the inside so it can't pull out.
That's called the UL knot. (United Labs)
For the Joyce laptop it would be worth checking the free disk space. Windows will sulk and run slowly if it doesn’t have a fair percentage of free space.
Hiren's pe bootdisk is a must to check everything, wouldnt be without it
win10 has high resource requirements. 4GB won't be enough. I noticed an empty ram slot in that last laptop. It may also be trying to use the hdd for storing memory from the ram, hence the drive being written to so often. The OS also runs a lot of data collection in the background. Checking the manufacturer for any updates to firmware or chipsets can help too.
You need to create a Ventoy USB stick with Ubuntu on it. Once you saw Windoze running like crap, you could have booted off the Ventoy stick and then seen Ubuntu running normally and then you would have known it was either a hard drive issue or Windoze was borked.
From the title I thought this was going to be a masterclass in how to make money from electronic repairs! Instead it's a great compilation of you fixing things! :)
For the sound, .. as a last resort .. you can use a usb sound dongle (they’re quite inexpensive).
I upgraded the ram on my Lenovo to 8Gb (swapped out both SODIMMS), and swapped the HDD to a 480Gb SSD. It works better now than it ever did before.
Seems like a Linux install image on a USB stick might make life seem worth living sometimes. Ubuntu, for instance, has a mode where nothing gets installed on the computer but you can boot into a desktop, listen to music, play videos, surf the internet and etc.
9:46 - I’ve been 100% successful at repairing such damage by cracking the case in a bench vice (just like a walnut!) and resoldering the cable to the board inside. Reuse the strain relief or locate a similar one, a little cyanoacrylate glue an Viola! Done! A very handy skill for repairing oddball wallwarts that are not so easily replaced.
On the slow cpu with the power plan you can change options in it and set max & min cpu speed, select power options then change plan settings then change advanced power settings , then processor power management and check the max processor state
Agree, also my idea that the power plan settings are screwed up. Had a performance problem with an quote old used VAIO i5 Laptop, upgraded to Win 10 prof home editition. I kept that upgrade installation but added the original Win 7 64bit. Tweaked the power plan so the laptop runs well again. Expanded RAM to 8 GB and changed 750 GB WD HDD to a 500 GB SSD.
Added a Q4OS Linux (Debian Bookworm) Windows installation on that Win 7 home premium NTFS file system.
So I got a triple boot and I use that laptop on a day and nightly basis.
One thing I still have to fix are presumably depleaded electrolytics for the sound amplifire, because the sound out of the build in speakers is quite terrible.
Bzw. SONY completely deleted all support sites.
I think you should run crystal disk on his hard drive to check the health of it, I've had something similar with an older laptop where some sectors were bad but the computer would still run yet excruciatingly slowly.
ya spinning drives usually fail on the sectors where the operating systems are stored as they are read he most and I would at least check the health of that drive which I assume is a spinning rust drive. By default WIndows10 has Fast Startup enabled which means that Windows does not completely shut down but rather uses hibernation file to save info to help Windows start up faster.
Along with 4GB of RAM and a celeron and a spining rust Hitachi hard drive. Min for Win10 is 8 GB RAM. Does it by chance have Avast orother malware running in the background?
I find Speedfan to be a quick test for internal HDDs to get the SMART values sent off to a website that interprets the data and gives a human readable appraisal of any out of range values.
Obviously for drive testing Crystal Disk or VictoriaHDD are useful.
For the 3.5" socket , I would just fit a cheap USB DAC about £3-5 .
The slow Lenovo is way more likely to need a new OS install, plus an SSD and +4GB , the owner probably hasn't let it update properly in years so it's got a borked OS.
44:03 I am screaming at the screen MALWARE richard it is malware run malwarebytes !!!
For the slow laptop, I'm sure you checked the usual suspects (disk space, swap space, defective memory etc) and why are basic apps taking forever to appear in task bar. Maybe trying to update something over Internet, too many unused open apps (shutdown unnecessary services), defective device drivers etc. An anti-virus from hell trying to load.
Hardware diagnostics is first step.
If mechanical platter disc drive, always run drive test before doing any software uninstall/reinstalls.
My worse analogy is this one. The tire keeps going flat. Customer: "I keep adding air but it is flat again."
Mechanic: "Did you check the tire for a leak by spraying soapy water on it and looking for bubbles?"
Customer: "No I just keep putting air in it. Do you think that might be the problem?"
JSYK, for gluing those PSU plastic cases together, I've been using T-7000 (yeah, the cell phone screen stuff) and it has been working great!
Regarding the CPU issue, I've noticed that it's throttling the clock a lot. A test that may be worth doing is to disable Intel SpeedStep in the BIOS. The battery is going to drain faster, but the performance must improve.
As you say the Lenovo would benefit from a 4GB RAM upgrade and an SSD swapout. You could clone the old HDD to the SSD preserving his programs and it should run a lot better.
The main issue with doing a clone is it won't fix the speed. This is because if you look at any PC that has this same issue the registry will usually be over 1GB in size. It's continually accessed so the larger it gets the slower it gets. You can't fix it with an SSD and more RAM. The only way is remove the HDD and keep it as a backup and put in a new drive with a fresh OS install. If you're going with Win11 you should at least use that app to clean up the built-in spyware and disable os updates otherwise in a year it will kill itself again hehe!
On some PCs you may find that the manufacturer's declared maximum ram is 4GB (not this machine, it has an empty memory slot). However, manufacturers have to assume that the ram you will fit is 1Rx8 (1 row x 8 bits), often listed on the ram stick. In actual fact, the maximum stated is PER BANK. If you fit ram which is 2Rx8 then you can usually double the manufacturer's declared maximum. It is marginally slower than 1Rx8 because it has to switch between memory banks but it is a lot faster than the alternative "virtual ram" which is really using the disc as ram. I've done it many times and haven't failed yet. Of course, if you try that on a 32-bit machine it will still only use about 3GB but that's not the case here. Unless stated otherwise the memory controller has to be able to handle 2Rx8 memory so it must be able to perform bank switching.
The next thing to do is upgrade windows 10 to the latest version. This will effectively re-install windows. Unlike previous versions of windows it generates a new copy of the registry so there is no need to start from scratch. Unfortunately in some cases the upgrade just will not complete in which case a fresh install will be necessary.
Finally, and it's something everyone should do, uninstall all the manufacturer's bloatware plus any software you no longer use. In addition, stop software from loading at startup. The number of times I've heard "but I might use it" is crazy. People don't realise that the reason they have to wait 15 minutes for their PC to be ready to use is because they don't want to wait a few seconds when they actually want a particular program.
It is malware 1000% malware I see it every day
@@Dutch-linux Yep, malwarebytes is the first thing I run on EVERY machine that comes in. And windows10 on a physical HD is pure insanity, I bet that machine came with win8 originally - which means buy it, install win7 and never upgrade :D
There are probably all these issues going on here on such an old machine with an unknown history. For me, formatting and installing a new OS is mandatory. Which OS is a whole question in itself.
Hopefully the customer can be convinced to install an SSD. It doesn't have to be fast or huge, but it needs to be reliable.
As far as reusing the flex boots I usually try and hollow them out. Sometimes running a drill bit through them so I can try and push the wires through them.
Did you run a benchmark on the HDD and check SMART data?
In the Lenovo maybe someone has limited the maximum processor speed because of fan removal.
Check in power settings (power options-change plan settings-change advanced power settings-power options-processor power management-maximum processor state and 27%).
Sounds crazy I know!, but would'nt take long to check.
That Lenovo needs a serious malware scan and disk defrag!
Wow, I should get some kind of "patch" or medal, because I survived this video😅😊😂..
"Windows update could have caused a problem." ... have been hearing that since the days or Windows 3!
When it comes to this sort of problem, I give the PC to the local Asian PC Repair Shop. They tend to deal with such problems weekly if not daily.
Looks like there's a lot of stuff running in the background on that laptop or maybe the hard drive is full. Try going into the task manager and stop the unnecessary processes that are running and that should speed it up substantially. If that doesn't help, then defragment the hard drive and be sure to select recovery of bad sectors. May take all night but at least you can sleep while it's doing that. Hope this helps. Great videos. Keep them coming. I've learned a lot from watching your videos and enjoy them greatly.
Hi Dicky, just watched this video, great fix on the first machine, but the Lenovo was like watching paint dry, definitely a software issue, and from my experience in the computer world, ie laptops and desktops, it’s a long shot but I’m pretty certain, if it’s got Google (VIRUS) chrome, it conflicts against any other web browser, fully delete it, I’m sure it’ll run a lot faster.. just a suggestion, before anyone has any issues, great work mate. 🤙🏼🇦🇺
Joe from Australia 🤙🏼🇦🇺
Brill video Rich, well done, got an answer for you for why the Lenovo laptop ran on low-speed if you look carefully you'll see it run at 0.5Ghz which has something to do with power management when on battery will pull the speed down to min to prolong the battery and from what I saw you did not used its own charger and a makeshift one. Had similar probs with a MSI laptop when ran it on the battery will reduced speed to min, and when plugged in will ran max out.
ok, I don't know why Kenny Roger's song "Ruby, Don't take your love to town" when I saw this title. But sing it to the beat of that sound, ", Don't turn this work away".... ok, going back to my cell now.
Wonder if you can specify the brand of solder wick you used. All I see when looking on-line is the really thin stuff, but what you had was much thicker and removed the solder very well.
I'm enjoying your repair videos - thank you for sharing your process ☺️
That Medion (I think that's an Aldi brand?) laptop is going to have a return visit - a headphone socket in a bar environment is going to get a good amount of wear and tear (especially if the cable is just hanging out when it's in use. I wonder if some kind of breakout/docking unit might be helpful... but obviously that will limit the potential for a return visit in 6 months time...😁
Looks like that laptop CPU speedstep isn't working - stuck at 0.52GHz whereas on your test SSD it was switching up to max speed 2.12GHz.. There are some advanced speed limits that can be set in power management, but may be worth just a quick change from balanced to max performance just to see... Plus a data migration to SSD would definitely make a massive difference compared to an old, fragmented spinning rust drive :)
It may appear to help,but if, as I suspect, the problem is insufficient RAM causing excessive disk memory swapping, the swapping will continue, only it'll be a lot faster than to hdd. The fix for shortage of RAM and swapping is to add more RAM. As another commenter indicates, looks like there's a spare RAM slot
@@pjzz2000no way. If you look closer to the video - there's still headroom for the ram and c drive has 2/3 of free space which means additional ram or new hdd is waste of money and won't solve anything. He run win. from his drive and it run properly. Definitely it's software issue OR it might be hdd start to fail. First thing is to check hdd health (bad sectors) and winows files integrity. Malware wouldn't cap the cpu speed to 0.5 GHz. Windows reinstallation (or repair - there is such option) is the key here. Then checking hdd health
PS.
This laptop would benefit from SSD though. And yes, it would also mean fresh win install, so it would fix software issue 😂 but it is extra expense on an old laptop - is it worth it?
Memory usage in Windows is a complex subject. What you see is often confusing unless you know exactly how the operating system manages its virtual and physical memory.
I guarantee that it is worth trying, as the first step, adding 4gb to the spare ram slot. If you don't do that first and then switch in an SSD, you will learn nothing about memory usage.
@@pjzz2000 the symptom is: cpu is capped at 0.5 GHz, no matter what the laptop was doing. Lack of ram wouldn't do that. Normally I would agree that it's worth checking (especially because HDD was loaded), but not in this particular case. CPU utilization would fluctuate. Also, when he plugged his drive with win (without adding RAM) - everything was fine. Giving a 2nd thought on it, if I would have to pick only one, the most probable cause, I would bet on win sys files corrupted (regardless if caused by bad sectors or just file corruption).
File corruption just happens and depending on the particular file, wired things start to happen 😉 been there, seen that (couple of times) 😉
@mehow9521 CPU is not capped. Its current utilisation is 28%, running at 0.5ghz. CPU clock speed is normally determined by demand for CPU.
A CPU can be either be, executing instructions or waiting for interrupts to complete,the key one being IO interrupts. (Disk reads/writes).
So what happens is, when there is insufficient RAM, the sum total of the operating system memory requirements is bigger than the physical RAM, so pages of RAM memory keep having to be swapped out to disk, to make space in RAM for the next process to swap in its memory, ready to execute the next instruction. This is normal operating system design, but if there is too little RAM, this behaviour starts to cause severe performance problems.
This is a classic case of shortage of RAM where the CPU is unable to do anything useful , hence low utilisation and lower clock speed.
High IO is thwarting the CPUs ability to execute anything.
Remember, IO is dramatically slower than CPU and memory activity. The CPU is ready and waiting to do loads of work....but it can't, because it is waiting on slow IO from HDD to swap in memory to RAM. The capping you see is because of the hdd activity.
I also guarantee (as far as we ever can!) that if you switch to SSD, the CPU usage will increase drastically. There will be just as much IO, but it will be dramatically faster than swapping from hdd. CPU utilisation will increase, and with the increased usage, so will clock speed.
The only thing is, that if you shove 4gb of memory in, instead of ssd, you will save money, time, complexity.
Once you've seen that that corrects the performance problem, you can shove in an ssd as well for good measure. This will also certainly help both the operating system, especially boot time, as well as all applications.
My suggestion is, always do the easiest, most obvious test first, before reaching more complex conclusions. Hope that helps.
The second laptop is a basket case. It appears that may be the original installation of Windows. In any case the machine is running a ton of unnecessary rubbish that is depleting the RAM. With only 4GB that doesn't take much. In task manager RAM was at 66% utilization and the machine wasn't even finished loading cruft yet.
When a computer is very RAM-constrained, it will be occupied with reading and writing to the page file/virtual memory. An old laptop HDD is very slow, so the CPU has to wait for I/O to complete. Therefore it gets stuck at low utilization, while seemingly nothing much happens.
You don't know the history of the laptop. Often such a machine has dozens of useless things that have been installed and forgotten that load up every time it's started, possibly including malware of all sorts.
A good clean-out or reinstallation is in order. I also agree, another 4GB of RAM and an SSD will bring new life to this machine, making it decently usable for years to come.
That lenovo laptop need a malware scan for sure and a sfc /scannow to see if there are windows errors
and a DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth before running SFC
Greetings:
Have you tied a self-booting OS from a USB drive that you are familiar with?
It has mp3 files right there on the desktop !!!
That laptop is only good for some light version of linux, it has no business running win 10. 1 anemic core, 4gb of ram and a HDD. You can upgrade the ram/SSD but the CPU bottleneck will remain severe.
Yes, I still had an Atom-based HP 5103 Netbook laying around. That thing is only useable in a few ways: external terminal, photo frame or a music player ( with external speakers). Even with the lightest modern Linux installed on it, it still runs like a slug going uphill. The anemic processor is the main culprit here, since it has 4GB of RAM and an SSD.
Oh my Microsoft if a computer is a little older within 10 years put in an SSD with a Linux operating system like Zorin and it'll run great. I've been doing this to friends computers for years. Ubuntu, Cinnamon and other Linux OS will turn it around but I really prefer ZorIn as it has a feel of an older Windows product
Richard, just watched this video, and I stroked out on the Lenovo. What a POS!
PAUL, USA! 41:48
43:00 I've had a laptop with a similar problem it was running only at 800 MHz that was because it had a broken trace from the input current sense resistor to the charge ic but then it had problem with charging also
One of my Winblowz machines has bee stuf on a stupid update for 2 weeks. It's slower than molasses...
I haven't totally finished watching this video... Which are working on the Lenovo that is running like a snail, look there could be a lot of problems that make this machine behave the way it does first off.. Mechanical hard drive but more importantly is the 4 GB of RAM along with the mechanical hard drive, also you need to spend time in figuring out what is tying this machine up it's doing something in the background like installing updates which would put a tremendous drag on the performance of this machine with the combination of 4 GB of RAM and mechanical hard drive, also the possibility of malware... There also could be other programs like antivirus stuff running which again with this type of machine and I also suspect it's a low-end machine meaning the power of the processor, but what I'm seeing is the machine is tied up in the background doing things I would let it sit until he calms down and then investigate things running the background, especially during startup, I know in general your familiar with computers and how they work but since I have quite a bit of experience with preparing computers, not so much in the hardware area which I don't see any indication that would explain the behavior of this machine. I hope by the end of this video which I've got probably 10 or 15 minutes left to watch that you will come to these conclusions that the hardware is okay, now we moved on to the software and what's tying up the machine you see the spinning circle... And the absolute hesitation when you request a function that's a direct indication that the machine is busy... And it's telling you wait a minute I'm already really busy and you want me to turn on the media player, and now you want me to turn on the task manager I'm busy doing possibly updates in the background... 🙂 SSD's are cheap, and so is RAM. Even when you get this machine running in proper order those are going to hold back the performance of this machine. Now I will finish watching the video.... I be not worried you will resolve whatever is going on with this machine in the end. P.S. so many machines I repaired in the past were low-end machines, I'm sure this is one of them. Look at the amount of RAM that is left for the machine to have shuffle space or working space, with 4 GB of RAM. P.S. also I just want to make you aware of an oddity that I stumbled upon years ago and that is in Windows 8 and above shut down is not like the shutdown in Windows 7, technically Microsoft wants you to do a restart, this will reset the Col. that's one explanation, I have been given many computers that do all sorts of goofy things, when over time the Col. never gets fresh restart, there is a way to change the behavior where shutting the machine off will actually shut it off, and the next time you turn it on the Col. gets reset. to correct what I'm speaking about the procedure kinda goes like this in the search bar type Power & Sleep Settings, then look to the left column, under related settings you will see in blue... " Additional power settings " click that, on the right side select " choose what the power buttons do" Then in the next box you will see... Turn on fast Startup, sleep, hibernate, and lock have a check mark in them but they are grayed out, there is a box labeled turn on fast start up it's grayed out, Too remove the check mark check mark in the box, look above for blue writing that says "change current settings that are not available" now remove the checkmark. This will remove past normal which is a small file used to speed up the process by holding onto past settings... Fortunately this workout a lot of Microsoft dates and things. And it only saved a second or 2 at the most in your boot up time, but when you install an SSD this becomes irrelevant. Anyways I hope my long explanation here is helpful to someone. I don't hear the problems with scrambled and misbehaving machines like I did years ago after discovering this anomaly created by Microsoft every machine my hands on turn that function off and unfortunately in a business sense I don't hear too many calls to resolve certain behavior issues in Windows.
joyce - run the built-in defragment - Analyse
High disk usage and low cpu appearing throttled, could likely be shortage of RAM. It maybe spending all its time swapping memory to and from disk. 4gb ram is not enough for Windows 10 et .
Add new DIMM.
At least you can then work with a laptop that works and focus on the audio
You can buy strain relief fairly commonly, But I have found quite a few with unique shapes that I have had to replicate and 3d Print in TPU.
Life is too short for bogged down quirky PCs. If stopping processes didn't clear up a hiccup I'd boot Linux from USB and check if the switching to external speakers worked hardware wise. If there is a connection issue there I can imagine the PC getting hammered with interrupts?
4GB of RAM is pathetic... I would never let a customer run Windoze with anything less than 8GB, preferably 16GB. Ram is cheap these days, load up!
The hard drive on that Lenovo has a bad sector and that's why it hangs and then all of a sudden works good because it can't read that part of the disc The best thing to do is put an SSD in it it will speed up the transfer of data by 10 times almost like having a new laptop.. I've seen this quite a bit when you first turned it on and a little dots stop turning I immediately said... bad hard drive
Just getting a SSD and an external doc or a USB stick then get Windows up and download Aomie backup then just do a clone of the internal drive or a disk image to the USB stick... when it's done take the unit apart put that ssd drive in it take the other one out and you're fixed it's the hard drive is too corrupt and it causes it not to be able to do it just have to do a clean install but you can try to save you know any of their stuff from the my documents and such folders
On that Lenovo laptop have you tried to check if there were any system updates?
Another way to fix the audio jack is to just solder the switch in the always-enabled position. If they are using it in a bar and it's always connected to speakers and is used only for music the quick fix is to hard-wire the switch in the 'on' position and then you don't need to find and fit a new jack.
Very odd Lenovo behaviour. Reminds me of that song “I’m busy doing nothing..”.
Anything relevant in the event log (disk retries, memory sync delays, ..)? Also, have they stuffed some duff memory in the pc or different performance from each module?
where would the best advertising platform be? i can do the work, but have no idea how to generate custom🤔,Cheers, Mark.
Try local pawn shops, I did that with a couple. They give you lotsa jobs if they know you are reliable
In case of that last laptop - honestly - I would tell the customer to buy a new laptop. It is totally outdated and it barely works for the single purpose he is using it. And is really worth upgrading a device with such a terrible CPU?
Lenovo need more memory and will be responsiv. The HDD works so hard because, due to lack of memory, the system writes data to the disk and constantly works on it. Using SSD is still the same process except that SSD is much faster. When adding memory, most of these operations will take place on RAM.
Possibly an old laptop, with not enough memory, slow processor, too many programs opening at startup.
Great, what type of microscoop are you using?
Lenovo has bad drive. Seen it a hundred times. Its not just an o.s. issue because it hangs on lenovo screen too.
Can you do a video about crt tv repairing 🙂
Great video Richard. Would be a good idea for the bar owners to use bluetooth rather than use the 3.5mm socket.
Wow, the uptime on that Lenovo is 384 days :D
@36:58 no no Richard do not just re install windows ... remove the malware first that will do the trick re installing windows is a last resort never the first .... plus you got to back all music and things up first before re installing ... this time i really disagree with you on your thought process of this laptop
Windows is like the devil in angel clothes. If you don't do a clean install like every year, you'll end up with a bogged down version like this. Probably a spindle disk wich isn't even finished loading everything from when windows started. IO throttle from many years installing/uninstalling apps.. (system files etc still sometimes remain even after uninstall and shared libs etc are not deleted because of dependencies with other apps etc. After some years you have an OS that's spending most of it's time loading stuff it really don't need to load. Besides this you also probably have lot's of malware that's also hogging the IO.
So if your'e a Windows user, you know that you always have to do a clean install every year🙂
Who the hell runs windows 10 on 4Gb..... quite insane, it's too hungry, these machines came with Vista or Win7 and they struggle at times with 12Gb of ram! Blue screens aren't too uncommon, it's almost as if Microsoft has hijacked anything they don't support any more lol Quick TIP Richard, go get Blackbird and install it on a USB, and run it, things speed up immensely after a run of this amazing proggy.
at 0:12 its a medion that is what is wrong with it I had one and it had to go back 3 times for warranty repairs with in tne first 2 months and after the warranty periode the battery blew case cracked and was the end of it .....
@30:56 I would of ran a malware scan already with malwarebytes anti malware it has creepy virus buggies in there
Here in Argentina we charge more money for this type of PC (celeron, sempron), the loss of time is very different than an I3 or Ryzen. And most people buy these laptops...it's new, it will be fast...mistake. I know that Lenovo, it comes with Windows 7 by default. You have to add a new SSD, 4 GB more RAM and a basic Win 10. And Tell the customer that this is all the machine can do, not to install sophisticated things. It is a laptop that today will only be able to do basic things, Word, Excel, some music or TH-cam.
TH-cam will be a challenge.
Check that you have a swap file and that it is big enough.
You can indeed get these cable bend protection sleeves from the usual suspects. I wanted to link to one but my comment got auto-deleted by the almighty algorithm. Anyway, you can also use a few layers of heat shrink tubing to stiffen the cable a bit when it exits the charger. Cheap and simple.
In regards to that slow laptop, keep in mind that ever since Win8 (IIRC), this "fast boot" thing is usually enabled by default. Meaning the computer doesn't really shut down when you shut it down. It only ends the user session and then goes into a suspend-to-disk mode. When you turn it back on, it resumes that suspended image and starts a new user session. The kernel and drivers never get re-initialised. If there's a problem with those, a shutdown and power-on cycle won't fix it. You must either do a real restart, or disable "fast boot" in the energy management settings. I'm not sure it would fix this particular issue but it's definitely worth keeping in mind because it's completely counter-intuitive.
I did notice that task Manager said 384 days uptime. I thought I was seeing things.
Hdd needs replacing or try ssd instead also windows could be very old version
And how much would you charge the customer for such a repair?
That slow laptop only had 4gb ram, ideally needs 8gb. Not got to the end of the video just yet, but thats my thoughts on it at the moment.
That lenovo repair was the most slowest laptop I have ever seen , he definitely need to upgrade with ssd and ram
Winders RealTek Pain
Heya, oh wouw that lenovo is slow that's no good
I had to speed up the video for the slow laptop lol
For the slow laptop maybe suggest to the customer to install Linux. If it's only for music a lean version of Linux is all they need and because it's Linux it's secure so you don't need constant OS updates. One of my laptops is still running Kubuntu 8.10 and still runs as fast as it did when new heh!
Kubuntu 8.10?! Better not attach that notebook to the big bad internet. Stand alone it won't present any problem.
From what I see your CPU is running at 0.5 GHz
The computer needs to be turned off and on. Do NOT restart. And run a malware test
Intel Celeron + mechanical hard drive + Windows 10...bad combo!
Obscure intermittent electrical faults every techs NiGhTmArE
the quickest and cheapest fix is to sell the customer a small usb sound card.for older/cheap laptops its the best option moneywise.
yes I know .... malware run malwarebytes I bet you that it finds atleast 50 creepys or even way more .... do not format i get this stuff daily please Richard run malwarebytes
NOOOOOOO do not format is not needed run malwarebytes richard !!!!!
nope not HDD it is malware !!!!
that laptop for sureeeeeeeeeeeeeeee need new windows install fresh from zero and replace normal HDD with SSD and it will play music ok. its trash lenovo trust me brother repaired 10s of them no fan low spec its just for music and you need yo install SSD and 8gb and pray to work good. (fixed dozen of same model .... and they are pure trash for listening music from USB or SSD and that's it not even watching good quality video it start freezing.... trust...
Splashed liquids on the screen.... Ewww
Why do you talk like that where you raise your voice at the end or your last word in a sentence
Man it’s not hard to shave your fingers man like wtf