PC Help Desk in a Book: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to PC Troubleshooting and Repair

by Mark Edward Soper

Each year, thousands of harmless PCs suffer the pain and humiliation of buggy Windows installations, bad cable connections, mismanaged system resources, viruses, and slow Internet connections. All too... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789727560
• ISBN13: 9780789727565
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Que
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Best computer troubleshooting book

I have been involved with computers for more than 20 years, and this book is the best troubleshooting book that I have seen for computers. The information is very well organized and easy to use. There are many flow charts in the book to quickly resolve problems, and there is a very helpful table listing different problem symptoms and solutions. The book also has in-depth chapters on certain problems. It is a book that can easily be used for quick reference for a problem, or it can be studied in detail. Blank screens, software and hardware problems, faulty power supplies, and input/output devices are all discussed in the book. Solving just one problem would pay for the book, and you'll be glad you bought it after using it several times.

More helpful than any other source

I have spent hours on the phone with Dell, Microsoft, SBC, HP and countless other ISPs and manufacturers and have not been able to resolve issues or restore my system to usable status. This book tells you all that you need to know to put your system back in order, without transferring you around, routing your questions to India or blaming software or other system components for your problem. If you are tired of wasting your time using "tech support" this is the book you should have.

A great help

I had looked at this book for a long time, but delayed buying it. I finally bought it as a supplement to other, more technical books I have. It gives me the information I need without numbing my mind in geek-speak. During the first 24 hours after buying it, this book got me out of several difficult problems quickly and effortlessly. Surprisingly, it is not the diagnostic flow charts I have found most helpful, but the book's running text located by way of index entries has been the most helpful to me in solving the problems I had, one of which was the Blue Screen of Death related to the recognition of a hard drive on an OS installation.

I am not a friend of the author, but I praise him!!

Mark Edward Soper, can you just kind of "pick up your shoe and I'll kiss the bottom?" I hold a BSEE, a MSEE and I am a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (2002). I cannot praise this author enough for this work, I have utilized his complete information from BIOS to preparing/formatting hard drives to troubleshooting the PC and it's subsystems from Windows 9x to XP all the way from A to Z. I can't thank the author enough, I wrote to him personally and thanked him. Thanks again!!

Using a unique, medical dictionary approach

When your personal computer suffer from buggy Windows installations, has bad cable connections, is plagued with mismanaged system resources, viruses, and/or slow Internet connections, don't be quick to toss it out! With a little knowledgeable care, your dysfunctional computer could with the help of Mark Soper's PC Help Desk In A Book: The Do-it-Yourself Guide To PC Troubleshooting and Repair, become useful again. Using a unique, medical dictionary approach, PC Help Desk In A Book walks users through the symptoms to diagnose and treat the problem. End-users will be armed to perform cost-effective upgrades, repair fouled Windows installations, and squeeze out a little more performance from a slow Internet connection in lieu of purchasing a new computer. 576 pp., User Level Beginner-to-Intermediate