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I recently had a computer from a customer and the computer had a black screen after booting up. The black screen occurred right after the Windows XP logo with the scrolling bar. It just stayed black so you could not use it.

The first thing to do is to determine if the problem is related to software or hardware. So I tried to boot it into safe mode and it worked. So it is most likely a software problem. The possibilities are:

1. Some startup programs causing a conflict
2. Virus/trojan
3. VGA driver not working properly

These are the possibilities I had immediately thought of that would have caused the black screen issue. So I started to test each of them.

Test For Startup Conflicts

Since I was still in safe mode, it was very easy to test if it is the startup programs. I started msconfig (type it in Run) and selected “Diagnostic Startup”. Then I restarted the computer and tried to boot normally. The black screen still came up.

Scan For Viruses

To check for virus/trojan, I took the hard drive out and connected it to a workstation dedicated to scanning viruses. It found 97 infected files and cleaned them up. After scanning, I hooked it back up and tried to boot into Windows. Still no luck.

Update VGA Driver

The next thing is to update the VGA driver. This time I booted into the “standard VGA mode” instead of “safe mode” and it worked. So it is very possible that the VGA driver is causing the problem. Since it is a NVIDIA card, I downloaded the most recent driver from their website. After re-installing the driver, it was able to boot normally and no more black screen. (Alright!)

Story Not Yet Ended

My customer took the computer home and expected it to boot up fine. Well, the black screen came back. Since they also have two other computers at home and they are all connected through the same router, I suspect that there is a virus on their network which caused the black screen problem. So I re-installed the driver for them and this time, I told them to turn off the other two computers first before connecting this one back. Now it is really working fine.

(I am still waiting for my customer to bring me the other two computers to fix.)

These guys are talking about the problems when taking your computer to large companies such as the Geek Squad at Best Buy. They also pointed out a couple of things that you should consider when looking for the right guy to fix your computer.

1. Ask the technician to show you his credentials.
2. Ask for 2^nd opinion before deciding who to fix your computer.

I totally agree with them.

What’s your experience with the technicians from companies like Best Buy and Futureshop?

You should also ask the technician about the questions I have blogged earlier here.

Which antivirus software are you using? (If you don’t have one, then you should not be connected to the Internet!) Is it free software such as AVG? Or is it commercial software like Norton Antivirus? No matter what it is, I think you should at least use a commercial antivirus software and my recommendation is NOD32 from ESET.

There are mainly 3 antivirus software that my computer store carries. They are Symantec Norton AntiVirus, Kaspersky Anti-virus, and ESET NOD32 Antivirus. I have experienced with the three products and among them, ESET NOD32 Antivirus is the most effective in detecting viruses in my opinion.

There was a case where a customer’s laptop got infected with a virus which kept reseting the system date back to year 2000. The laptop had Norton AntiVirus installed which obviously couldn’t detect this virus. Because the system date was reseted to the past, it causes some programs that depends on the date and time to malfunction, including the subscription of the antivirus program. You can set the clock back to the correct date, however, once you rebooted the machine it got reset again.

In this kind of cases, we usually take out the hard drive and connect it to our isolated computer that is dedicated to scanning hard drives for viruses. On that isolated machine, we had Kaspersky installed. Once we connected the hard drive, Kaspersky was not able to detect the virus too and our machine even got infected. Kaspersky was not working because of the date problem. So we decided to install NOD32 Antivirus and give it a try.

Once we installed NOD32 Antivirus and updated it (we corrected the date and didn’t reboot our machine so that the date was not reset), it immediately detected a threat and blocked it. We have then removed the infected files and our system date no longer reset after rebooting. We did the same for the customer’s laptop and the problem was solved. We have kept NOD32 Antivirus software on our virus scanning system since then.

So what is your experience with your antivirus software?

So this is the last session on FreeSiteDesigner. If you have missed the first 2 parts, you can check them out here for part 1 and here for part 2. If you still do not have a hosting server for your website, you may want to sign up one from Bluehost. In this last part, I am going to show you some advanced functions to further customize your website.

Body Components

The body of each page consist of mainly three types of components - text, image and web tool. Web tool is like a javascript handler that allows you to plug-in a javascript tool to your website. For example, you can add a counter to your website. There are some pre-defined body layouts that let you re-arrange these 3 components on the page. To change the body layout, follow the steps below:

1. Select the page you want to change and click on “Edit Page”.
2. Click on the “Edit Body Layout” tab.
3. Click on the layout that you want and then click “Save”.

So you can setup a page that may contain all 3 components or just some of them. You can also customize the properties of background, font and links such as color and size. You can edit all these properties by clicking the “Edit Body Properties” tab.

Web Tool

The web tool component allows you to add any javascript codes to it. You can search on the Internet for some free javascript tools, copy the code, and paste it into the web tool component. For example, I went here and copied the code of a button for viewing the HTML source codes of a webpage. Below are the steps to insert the javascript codes:

1. Under “Edit Page” mode, click on the “add custom scripts” icon. If you don’t see the icon, then you need to change the body layout.
2. In the new window, click on the icon next to “Custom Scripts”.
3. Click on “Add new items”.
4. Paste the javascript code into the box and give it a name in the “Script Name” field.
5. Click “Save”.
6. Click on “Insert”.
7. You have now inserted the script. Remember to click “Save” to apply the changes.

Footer

The footer is very similar to the body. You can do pretty much the same things as you did for the body section. You can change the layout, change the properties such as color, font and background, and you can include a web tool as well. One tool you may want to add to this section is the counter. If you want all your pages to have the same footer, remember to check box next to “Apply this layout to all web pages’ footer”.

Sidebar

The sidebar is just another area under the menu where you can add text, image, and web tools. It is very useful for showing your visitors some tips, a quick view of your photos, or anything you can think of. You may also want to add a tool to this area such as setting up a poll. You can create a mixture of your like with the 3 components. You need to edit the sidebar individually for each page.

My FreeSiteDesigner Webpage

Here is what my FreeSiteDesigner webpage looks like before (left) and after (right) this tutorial. You can also check it out here.

So this is the end of my tutorials on FreeSiteDesigner. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know.

By the way, do you know any tools similar to FreeSiteDesigner that you have experienced with?

As I have mentioned here, if you give me any comments to any of my posts before grand opening, you will have a chance to win a Vantec LapCool TX notebook stand. Also, on the grand opening day of my blog (I told you it’s Dec 1 right?), I will post a trivia question and those of you who answer it correctly will have a chance to win a Thermaltake iXoft notebook cooling pad.

Why am I giving out these notebook accessories? Because I know many of you bloggers (me too) are blogging with a notebook in Starbucks, classroom, work, washroom, on your bed, in a park, etc. (you name it). So these accessories should be very handy.

Where do you blog really?