Help

Summer 2022

Who do you turn to when your computer starts behaving oddly, or not at all?  It’s a regular question from readers, and there’s no easy answer.

You might turn to Google; search for ‘laptop repairer in my area’ and you’ll see many options. No doubt some of them are skilful and worthy of their hire, but I bet that a few of them are useless at best, and scoundrels at worst.  But how do you separate the sheep from the goats?

Let’s take a step back.  First, and always, press the ‘Restart’ button and allow the machine to switch itself off and on again.  This can solve a multitude of problems; there’s a lot going on inside your laptop and it’s not hard for it to get into a muddle.  Use the ‘Restart’ not ‘Shut down’ option; don’t ask me why, but a ‘Restart’ really does clear the decks, whereas a ‘Shut down’ leaves some decks uncleared.

That doesn’t solve everything, and you might need professional help.  Here we enter deep waters.  Whoever you choose, they must be trustworthy; you will give them access to all that is on your computer. On top of that, they may well have to wipe it clean – especially if they have to replace something critical – and you might lose everything.  But, of course, you have backed everything up, so that won’t matter.  You have, haven’t you?

How do you assess a repairer when you have found one? It's no good asking to see qualifications; they probably haven’t got any.  It’s not their fault; there just aren’t any worth getting. I spoke to Lee Grant, who runs Inspiration Computers in Huddersfield.  He undertakes no end of repairs and recently won the Which? Trusted Trader of the year award.  He shares my view that it’s a jungle out there and believes that much of the problem is that laptops, phones and so on have for ages been built in a way that makes repair impossible.

This increases the amount of tech that is thrown away (very un-green), but also discourages people from even trying to set up repair shops.  That is changing, slowly, because of both government and consumer pressure, and we are seeing some growth in the repair market, but progress is slow.

In the meantime, what should we do?  As Lee Grant told me, it all depends on how much botheration you want and how much you spend.  The gold standard is to do what many businesses (and I) do: buy new equipment with an extended warranty from one of the big boys (I use Dell), then buy new kit when the warranty expires.  It’s an expensive option but I know that when something fails a technician will be here within hours and will mend or replace it at no cost to me.

But that’s no good if you have an elderly iPad your son passed down to you.  You need a friendly local repairer; elderly computers (five years or more is elderly, sadly) are like old cars: the local main dealer will sneer at them, but they are meat and drink to the mechanic in the railway arch.

So, my advice is this.  Like any professional, the best way to find one is by personal recommendation, so ask around.  Also, and even if you are given a personal recommendation, have a look at the Which? Trusted Traders scheme (trustedtraders.which.co.uk) and see if they recommend anyone locally.

Finally, as I mentioned before, please back up your computer one way or another; I’ll cover this next time.  Then, when your computer does fail beyond repair (Webster’s first rule of computing: All hard drives die eventually) at least it won’t have taken your unfinished novel with it to computer heaven.