Many desktop PC end-users have an incomplete understanding of how their machines actually work and things they can do to prevent problems. While some issues will always need to be attended to by qualified and experienced Technicians, it is hoped that information here can help you decide if these are something you can fix yourself or whether to call a technician.
Our Vision at QualityHelp is to guide IT support folk in the principles and value of quality management through team involvement and sharing.
When the Desktop Support customer is a small company, a private user, or even a friend or relative, professional support folk and part time techos often provide an adhoc, "time and materials" solution for PC problems and requests. This is especially true for one-off customers and end users with low budgets (or seeking a freebie). Apart from recording basic customer contact and PC information, no other quality processes are applied.
In many cases there is little incentive or apparent value in maintaining a more structured, systematic approach for support management. However, there is a strong argument, and many benefits for small PC support businesses and stand-alone technicians to think of the bigger picture - think ITIL.
Some of my colleagues have questioned our use of the term HelpDesk for a stream of articles and support. Given that our site objectives are centred around some of the core ITIL Service Management disciplines, then the question (aka customer query) for overlooking "IT Service Desk" is worthy of some discussion. Whilst the ubiquitous Wikipedia provides a fair stab at defining the accepted differences, for this discussion (ie Help Desk versus Service Desk), we'll simplify the differences as:
HelpDesk - Provide rapid response to paying customers and end users for information, services and issue resolution, related to company products and services.
ServiceDesk - An ITIL function providing a central, single point of contact for all clients and users of a company's services, including IT support services, especially problem, incident and request management.
It is apparent that Documentation is very vital when it comes to supporting any environment. Whether it be a simple and small scale environment or a large and highly complex environment, documentation has a very significant role. If there is a well written proper documentation of how the support activity is to be carried out, the support activity itself becomes a breeze. On the contrary, if there is no documentation of what's being done and how it's to be done, then it becomes very hard to support an environment.
Are you tired of your computer? Our computer technicians repair your PC in your home or office. Online technical support resources provide PC Support and computer repair on most makes and models of computers and PCs. If you have a high speed Internet connection, service technicians can securely access and repair your computer remotely. Your PC will be diagnosed using different diagnostic tools at which point a problem should be found, diagnosed and repaired while you remain in the comforts of home. It’s like having a personal computer technician to resolve all your computer problems.
Windows Task Manager is a task manager application included with the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems that provides detailed information about computer performance and running applications, processes and CPU usage, commit charge and memory information, network activity and statistics, logged-in users, and system services.
Article on how you can use this to determine what is 'chewing' cpu and memory.
I have had about 6 calls in the last year from an overseas call centre where more often than not a lady has identified herself as being from Microsoft and advised me that my computer is infected with a virus. This happened to a friend a while ago and she started to go down that path until they asked for a credit card number.
No Vendor will ever ring you directly like this. I doubt that even Microsoft would try to maintain a database of ipaddress to users especially when most home users are on a system where they are randomly leased an address from a pool of addresses owned by their service provider (ie their address is not static). Likewise if somebody calls and says they are from your bank and asks for login/passwords to your internet banking accounts I would be suspicious.
With the recent eBay announcement asking members to change their passwords due to a security breach, most users reset their passwords immediately.
When the Desktop Support customer is a small company, a private user, or even a friend or relative, professional support folk and part time techos often provide an adhoc, "time and materials" solution for PC problems and requests. This is especially true for one-off customers and end users with low budgets (or seeking a freebie). Apart from recording basic customer contact and PC information, no other quality processes are applied.
Some of my colleagues have questioned our use of the term HelpDesk for a stream of articles and support. Given that our site objectives are centred around some of the core ITIL Service Management disciplines, then the question (aka customer query) for overlooking "IT Service Desk" is worthy of some discussion. Whilst the ubiquitous Wikipedia provides a fair stab at defining the accepted differences, for this discussion (ie 
I have had about 6 calls in the last year from an overseas call centre where more often than not a lady has identified herself as being from Microsoft and advised me that my computer is infected with a virus. This happened to a friend a while ago and she started to go down that path until they asked for a credit card number.