Troubleshooting Your PC

by Jim Aspinwall, Rory Burke, Mike Todd

An unfortunately large percentage of the population regards repairing a personal computer as comparable in difficulty to fixing a Boeing 747. The truth is, it's not nearly that hard--anyone can debug the components that make up a modern PC. Troubleshooting Your PC makes the task easier by providing readers with information on the systems that make up an IBM-compatible microcomputer. This book excels at providing background information on various kinds of components. It also does a fine job of decrypting acronyms and explaining how different subsystems relate to one another. The authors attack systems--such as the video system, disk drives, and serial devices--individually, listing symptoms, likely causes, and potential fixes for each. Unfortunately, they don't outline solutions in much they advise replacing your hard drive in certain situations, for example, but don't adequately describe how.

Some of the information in these pages seems stale--there's no explicit explanation of how to install RAM modules, and there's no mention at all of modern PC-100 RAM. Similarly, the authors neglect not only the Intel Pentium III but also the well-established Celeron and Xeon chips. It's as if they updated an old edition of this book a little too cursorily. A companion CD-ROM includes a collection of software, plus an evaluation version of Symantec Norton Utilities 3.0. --David Wall

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992