Chris Barton: A helping hand when technology's marvel starts behaving like a pig

My home PC printer refused to print last week. Not a major calamity, but enough to provide considerable consternation in our house and remind us how much we rely on PC technology.

Whenever something goes wrong with the PC, the job of fixing it falls to me. How I hate it.

I hate the time it takes - the endless trial and error. If I added up all the hours ... no, it just adds to the pain.

I hate the struggle - the terrible battle to overcome my own ignorance and that of the machine.

But above all I hate the inevitability. That just as something is fixed - oh joy! - something will soon be broken. Despite all the wondrous things a PC brings, it really is a pig of a machine.

The printer defeated me in a rather cruel way. After several days of my random tinkering, it burst back into life. The mighty warrior had vanquished the foe - even if I didn't quite know how. Must have been cleaning out the printer spool and reinstalling the printer driver.

But my elation was short-lived. The next day the wretched device stopped again, mercilessly mocking me with its flashing yellow light.

I gave in, accepted my shame, and called the tech guy. Graeme had come to my aid before, several years ago when a different PC died.

What's interesting about Graeme is that he doesn't fit the geek stereotype. A former fitter and turner at the Glenbrook steel mill, he was made redundant about 12 years ago and got into servicing computers.

He doesn't advertise, doesn't have a web site and gets all his work by word of mouth.

Even his company, Megatech, isn't in the phone book, but he's under Runciman on the North Shore.

He's also the ideal serviceman. Unlike many oafish, knowall techies, Graeme doesn't pretend he knows everything. He often says things like, "Well, I don't really know what's causing that, but we'll find out".

I was convinced the printer fault was something in the PC, but Graeme quickly decided it was the printer - although he didn't know exactly what was wrong.

He took it away and left me with a replacement - amazing service, even if it does cost $75 to $85 an hour.

The next day he rang me with the problem nailed. The colour cartridge wasn't making proper contact.

In the art of PC maintenance, you learn something new every day - especially how often you miss the obvious.

I also got Graeme to have a look at a few other niggling enigmas.

Yes, he gets the problem of stopping Messenger loading a lot. No, they don't really have a solution - especially when others in the family want Messenger to run. Later I find an answer myself.

Yes, he gets the issue of Windows XP slowing down. Microsoft acknowledges some of the problem, but it may also be caused by too many ".tmp" files or too many processes running.

To fix the processes, begin by typing "msconfig" under "Run" from "Startup".

Have a look at the processes running under the Startup tag and check the site below to see whether you need them.

Warning: do not try this at home unless you think you know what you're doing.

Does he know why I have so many .tmp files and why even when I delete them they keep coming back? No.

Or why the defrag utility is not working. Or why System Restore is not letting me go back?

No, but it does look like my disk is getting rather too full.

The options? Nuke the disk and do a total system rebuild - a time-consuming process of reinstalling everything from scratch that I haven't had to do for about two years. Or get a bigger disk.

Ah yes - and maybe add a bit more memory while we're at it. PC maintenance, it never ends.

* Email Chris Barton

Windows Messenger in XP

Microsoft Support

Startup Program and Executable Listing