2019 in review

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Calendar
I can’t believe that another year is almost over. That means it’s time for another year in review. 😉

As I look back on 2019, I can’t help but to be extremely grateful for everything that it’s brought – the ups and downs, the new skills learned, and the exciting plans for the future.

In this last year alone, we’ve repaired hundreds of computers – both desktops and laptops, running Windows and Mac – for some amazing people.

We’ve removed viruses, stopped malware, and blocked pop-ups from computers of all makes and models, and all shapes and sizes.

We’ve successfully recovered data from dead computers, old computers, flash drives, floppy disks, and SD cards for many panicked and stressed-out customers.

Our Maintenance Plan has protected our client’s computers – saving them hundreds of dollars, and countless hours of downtime and frustration.

We’ve helped clients who were scammed by unscrupulous emails, pop-up ads, and telephones calls – securing their computers, and walking them through the steps of recovering what was stolen from them.

We’ve advised many clients on what equipment was needed to fill their particular IT needs, recommended software, and helped with setting everything up.

We were even awarded for being the top rated Computer Repair/IT Services company in Grand Junction for the second year in a row, and the scored second highest in the whole state of Colorado.

We’ve met thousands of new faces, earned almost a thousand new clients, and made hundreds of new friends this year

2019 has given us a lot to be grateful for, and I know that 2020 will prove to be even more awesome!

Client Success Story: The Magic Touch

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Not every computer we work on requires a long and complex solution. Sometimes all it takes is a little patience… And the magic touch.

The other day a lady came in to our office with an older Windows 7 laptop in tow, saying that the laptop just wouldn’t turn on anymore. She said that when she pushed the power button it seemed like the laptop got power, lights would come on and she could hear the fan spinning, but the screen would remain dark.

As she was setting the laptop, the power cord, and that laptop’s battery on the counter, she began telling me that she wanted to make sure that the laptop was turned off, but since she couldn’t see the shutdown button on the screen, she decided to just removed the battery.

Obviously under a great deal of stress and talking a mile a minute, she told me that this laptop was used for her business, and was in a hurry to get it fixed. She thought that maybe the screen had gone out, and might need to be replaced.

She then told me that she had just made the trip up to Grand Junction from Montrose to have the her laptop looked at, since over the past could of days she had taken the laptop to a couple places in Montrose, and was told that since the laptop was older, they couldn’t get the parts needed to fix the screen.

Before looking up how much it would cost to replace this laptop screen, I wanted to be absolutely sure that the screen was the problem in the first place. I wanted to connect the laptop to an external monitor and run a few quick tests, so I put the battery in the laptop, and pressed the power button, and everything came on like it should.

The poor lady obviously surprised by this unexpected turn of events, but I had a funny feeling that I knew what had just happened. I asked if it was still okay to check on a few things and then started poking around.

I asked if he had recently done any Windows updates, and she said that she had, right before the screen stopped working.

I knew right then what the problem was.

I ran some quick hardware and software tests, just to make sure that nothing else was wrong with the laptop. What I found confirmed my suspicions.

It seemed as if there was a bit of a hiccup with a Windows 10 Update, and by removing the battery and power cord, the lady inadvertently did a CMOS reset, which allowed windows to boot up and finish it’s update.

Everything else about the computer was in perfect working order.

Absolutely delighted, the lady reached for her wallet and asked me how much she owed for the repair. I told her that all I did was poke around a bit, I didn’t really fix anything, so there was no charge.

With a huge smile, the lady grabbed a handful of business cards and said that she was going to tell everyone about how helpful we were. I smiled and told her that that was exactly what I liked to hear.

She grabbed her laptop, and bounded out the door.

It wasn’t until then that I realized that I had forgotten to ask her name.

Regardless, helping our clients is the name of the game. If there’s anything that No Ware Computer Repair can help you with, please give us a call, drop us a line, or swing on by our office in Grand Junction. We’re always happy to help!

windows update failure

Client Success Story: Farmer’s Friend

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High tech farming
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Grand Junction isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, and that the surrounding area is still home to many small farms and ranches.

Will, the owner of one of these small farms in rural Mesa County uses his computer to run his farm. He uses spreadsheets to keep track of his fields – how much of each nutrient and fertilizer that he puts in each plot. He also uses a digital almanac and weather apps to preconfigure his numerous sprinklers and automatic watering systems.

So when Will’s computer froze up after a Windows update a couple months ago, he was in a bit of a panic. Whenever he would turn the computer on, he was met with a black screen and nothing more. It was the middle of planting season, and the worst possible time for Will’s computer to go on the fritz.

Every now and again one of Microsoft’s updates to Windows can occasionally cause a computer to become unbootable. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.

We were originally hoping that it would be a simple matter of just resetting the computer to a previous restore point, getting Will and his farm back up and running nice and quickly. Unfortunately, System Restore was turned off – as it is by default in Windows 10 – leaving us up the proverbial creek.

We would have to take a different approach.

We booted the computer up using a USB drive with Linux installed on it. From there we were able to transfer all of Will’s data – tons of spreadsheets and other documents – to an external Hard Drive.

Once we were sure that we got all of the data copied, we then reinstalled Windows 10 onto the computer. We made sure that all the drivers were installed, and the system was up-to-date. We then installed Microsoft Office, and Will’s almanac and weather apps.

Next we transferred all the data back onto Will’s computer, putting it in all the appropriate folders. We even changed the default wallpaper to the picture of Wills dog that he previously had as his background.

Finally, we ensured that System Restore was active, so that if something like this were to happen again, the downtime would be minimal.

With that all done, Will, and his farm, was back up and running. Just in time to finish planting.

Will was so happy that he promised to bring us a couple boxes of vegetables when it comes time to harvest.

We’re really looking forward to those veggies.

Client Success Story: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

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About a month ago we had the pleasure of meeting Elaine. Elaine was passing through Grand Junction, on her way to one of the area’s many ski resorts.

Elaine liked to travel, in fact, since retiring she has spent a majority of her time traveling and taking pictures. Just like most everyone these days, Elaine takes her pictures using her smart phone. In fact, she takes so many pictures that she occasionally plugs her phone into her laptop to transfer all the pictures, so that she can make some room on her phone for more photos.

When Elaine turned on her laptop so that she could read the news while having her morning coffee in her hotel room, she was greeted with a black screen. She tried waiting, but nothing happened. Elaine then tried restarting the computer, but the screen remained black.

That’s when Elaine got on her phone and used Google to look for someone who could help.

Elaine called us, citing our reviews on Google, and told us about her situation. It sounded like Elaine was in a bit of a pickle, so we had her bring her laptop down to our office so that we could take a look.

While chatting with Elaine, we were told about how she uses her laptop as a way of storing all of the photos that she takes on her travels. Needless to say, she was extremely concerned about all of her pictures.

After assuring Elaine that we would do whatever we could to save all her pictures, we got to work.

It didn’t take long to determine that a botched Windows update was the reason that her computer wasn’t booting up. After doing a little more poking around, we decided that the best thing to do would be to pull all of the data, completely reinstall Windows 10, and migrate the data back on to the laptop.

We quickly learned that Elaine wasn’t kidding when she said that she has a lot of pictures on her computer. Almost 200 Gigabytes of photos alone had to be pulled off the laptop before we could proceed with reinstalling Windows. Once the pictures were backed up, everything else was a breeze.

When Elaine came to pick up her laptop, we had a brief sit-down, and discussed how she was backing up her photos, and brainstormed a better way for her to get the job done.

We ended up setting her up with Dropbox on her phone and computer, and taught her how to upload her files so that they would be saved in the cloud and synced to her laptop. She was absolutely ecstatic when she uploaded her first set of photos on her own.

After the work was done, we sat with Elaine for a while as she showed us some of the pictures from her many travels all around the world over a nice cup of green tea.

Is your computer giving you trouble? Call us now to see how No Ware Computer Repair can help you!

beach laptop

Client Success Story: The Perfect Gift

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Tech gift
Not all Christmas gifts have to be traditional. Sometimes something “outside the box” can be the most amazing gift of all.

Our client Ben’s wife had been holding on to a couple of old computers that had ceased to function years ago, because she just couldn’t bring herself to get rid of them. Recently, she had been talking about how upsetting it was that so many old papers from college, art projects, and photographs were stashed away in those old machines, perhaps never to be seen again. The only reason she has been holding on to these old computers for all these years was that she was hoping to one day retrieve the data that was locked away in them.

While doing some cleaning Ben stumbled across these dusty old computers. This gave Ben a brilliant idea for his wife’s Christmas gift this year, have the data recovered from the old machines as something of a surprise.

Ben dragged these antiquated boxes into our office early in December, telling us of his brilliant gift idea, and asking us if we can help, and get everything done in time for Christmas. Never being ones for disappointing our clients, we told Ben that we could get our little elves to work right away.

After getting everything in order, a couple of things occurred to us: 1) These computers were definitely old. One was an old Power Mac G4 from 1999, and the other a MacBook from 2006 or 2007. And 2) Since Ben would need everything done before the holiday, preferably with enough time for Santa to get everything gift-wrapped and under the tree, our elves would have to work quickly.

Ben's Power Mac G4 from 1999
Fortunately, we have the tools and know-how to make quick work of a job like this. After pulling the hard drives from these ancient dust traps, we were able to recover all the data from both computers, and copy it all onto a brand new portable hard drive. By using a portable hard drive, Ben’s wife would be able to access the data from any computer that the drive is plugged in to.

We were able to get everything taken care of in just a couple of days, giving Ben plenty of time to find a deceptively large and misshapen box to package this tiny drive into, wrap it up in some pretty paper (complete with bows), and stash it under the Christmas tree.

Mrs. Ben was overjoyed to unwrap her special present on Christmas morning, earning our client some extra brownie points for being so very thoughtful.

Do you have an old computer just sitting around because you can’t bring yourself to part with it just in case something can be done to save the data? No Ware Computer Repair can do just that! Call us now, we can work our “holiday magic” on your old computers all year long!

Client Success Story: New computers/new friends

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New computer
No Ware Computer Repair is a people business, helping people with their computers is what makes it worth opening the doors every workday morning. However, we do more than fix computers, we also solve problems for our clients. In fact, problem solving is what we spend most of our time doing. It’s just that the problems that we specialize in solving happen to involve computers.

We recently met a new client, Jim, who had a custom computer that he built himself back in 2002. This computer was an absolute beast, a real thing of beauty. Every component was top-of-the-line back when he put everything together. It was no surprise that Jim was able to get so many years of usage out of this high-end machine. Unfortunately, as 15 years of usage went by, the computer became less and less able to do what Jim needed it to do. He brought it to us to see about an upgrade, but suspected it was time to let his piece of art go.

First, we ran the old computer through a series of diagnostics, confirming many of Jim’s suspicions. After fifteen years, the old computer had become like a family friend, and friends are always hard to let go of.

Since retiring a few years ago, Jim no longer needed such an extremely powerful system. We sat down with him, and determined his exact needs in a computer. After getting a firm grasp on Jim’s current computer usage and needs, we were able to recommend a system that would suit him perfectly.

Once the new computer arrived, we transferred all of Jim’s data over to from the old machine, and got everything set up on his new computer so that he could just plug it in and go. We tried to make the transition to a new computer quick and painless.

Whatever your computer and technology needs may be, No Ware Computer Repair is always ready to help.

Client Success Story – No WiFi

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If you’re like over three quarters of all Americans, your household pretty much runs on the internet. There are laptops, desktops, TVS, cell phones X-Boxes, PS4’s, iPads, Kindles – the list of electronics that use the internet in our houses goes on and on and on. Some homes even have their refrigerators connected these days!

When one device starts bouncing on and off the internet, it can feel like our entire house, our jobs, and even our very lives practically fall back into the stone age.

Like most people in this situation, our client’s first response to his laptop losing its connection to the internet was to call his Internet Service Provider. The usual advice tech support gives to calls of this nature is to “power-cycle” the modem and router by unplugging it for about a minute, and then plugging it back in. This helped his laptop’s connection for a few days, but eventually he started losing signal again. The next step our client took was to replace the router, which again, worked for just a few days. Checking the signal strength on the many other devices in his house; the client figured out, his laptop was the only device that was having this problem.

He took the laptop to our local big box store, hoping to learn what was wrong with it. After a few days of being without his laptop, the store told him they had to, “send it to a depot in order to figure out exactly what was going on.”

Understandably frustrated with this “solution”, the client picked up his laptop the other morning and brought it in to us here at No Ware.

After running a couple of tests, we were able to determine that the wi-fi card on the laptop was going out and needed to be replaced. After installing a new card, we tested it to insure continuous connection, then a quick call to the client to let him know the issue was fixed, that same afternoon.

When our client came to pick up the laptop he let us know that he had chosen to bring the laptop to us based on all our collection of great reviews online. A collection that he promised to add to as soon as he got home with his laptop.

Big or small, we here at No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction will solve your computer issues. From virus removal to data recovery to hardware replacement, No Ware has your back!

WiFi!