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IBM & IBM-compatible PCs, Upgrades & Repair - Computer Hardware, General & Miscellaneous PCs
The Complete PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide by Mark Minasi — book cover

The Complete PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide

by Mark Minasi
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Overview

The Complete PC Upgrade and Maintenance Guide is a problem-solving wonder. In simple, easy-to-follow language, it shows you how to prevent disasters, fix the ones that occur, and maximize your PC's power and longevity. Based on author Mark Minasi's popular seminars, this book is an unbelievable value—for only $59.99 U.S., it teaches you everything you need to know to meet your PC challenges.

Coverage includes:

  • Preventing hardware disasters
  • Installing new components
  • Upgrading memory
  • Replacing power supplies
  • Installing EIDE hard drives
  • Adding SCSI ports and devices
  • Partitioning and formatting EIDE and SCSI drives
  • Protecting your PC from viruses
  • Solving data backup challenges
  • Adding and repairing removable media devices CD-ROMs, floppies, and others
  • Troubleshooting printers Installing communications devices
  • Upgrading mice and keyboards Installing video and sound cards
  • Tackling networking issues Choosing a new PC
  • Troubleshooting Internet connectivity problems
  • Building your own PC
  • Solving special laptop problems
Featured on the CDs

On the first CD, you'll find over one hour of instructional video in which PC expert Mark Minasi teaches you his field-proven upgrade and repair techniques. Based on his popular $800 seminars, these videos are a great resource and an unbeatable value. On the second CD, you get over 20 system tune-up and diagnostic tools—utilities that help you monitor and fine-tune your PC's performance, restrict access to important data, and recover quickly when disaster strikes.

About the Author, Mark Minasi

Mark Minasi is Sybex's most prolific and successful author with millions of copies of his books in print. He has 22 years experience in the computer business and has been teaching professional seminars since 1985. His Mastering Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 Server books are the #1 selling Windows titles in the world. 

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Mark Minasi is CNN’s resident PC expert: a master at explaining complicated stuff in plain English, without jargon, oversimplification, or condescension. That’s what you want in a book on PC upgrades and maintenance. And that’s what Minasi delivers in his.

The Complete PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide, 15th Edition is fully updated and as comprehensive as ever. You’ll find new coverage of Opteron, Centrino, Pentium 4, and Itanium processors. Flash memory. Serial ATA drives. Video capture cards. The whole menagerie of confusing DVD recordable technologies. And plenty more.

You name it, it’s here. Wired and wireless networking. Scanners. Printers. FireWire connections. Data recovery. Windows XP.

Minasi’s determined to give you all the help you’ll need to get the job done. There’s a complete chapter on taking PCs apart without frying them. Dynamic visual layouts walk you through many upgrades. This edition adds “QuickSteps” sections throughout: rapid-fire, step-by-step instructions for common tasks such as installing hard drives and DVDs, replacing power supplies, adding memory, and replacing CPUs. Want to see even more? There’s a complete video PC maintenance course on CD-ROM.

Why isn’t that 160 MB hard drive working with Windows XP? Why is your laser printer leaving vertical white streaks on the page? Why can’t you get enough sound from your speakers? Minasi shines when it comes to issues like these. There are problem-solving sections in almost every chapter. Better yet, he introduces a systematic approach to troubleshooting, one that’ll help you track down practically any problem, quickly. Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2003 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

Library Journal

On the cover of this book, a headline reads "Get valuable information worth more than $800 for the price of this book." I could easily argue that this book might save someone the cost of a new computer. In any case, Minasi's handbook to personal computers fills 22 chapters and three appendixes with solutions to problems with virtually everything under the PC sun. Like any good repair book, it starts off by telling you the kinds of tools you'll need and explains how to open your computer and study its innards. Following these opening chapters, there's help on preventive maintenance and troubleshooting. If none of these ideas and suggestions work, the last two chapters describe how to buy a new system and how to look for a multimedia system. This book contains lots of excellent information of utility to almost anyone using a personal computer.

Book Details

Published
February 24, 2004
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons
Pages
891
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780782143102

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