Symptom:  Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPSs) kept getting “cooked” when plugged into a particular power outlet I installed a new APC UPS at a customer’s office.  All APC UPSs have a wiring fault indicator light on them if there’s a problem with the electrical wiring and this one didn’t indicate a problem.  In less than 5 days, it was “toast”.  It had burn marks and emitted a strong ozone odor.  I thought that a surge had damaged the unit.  I swapped it out with a new unit and the new unit also got fried in less than 5 days.  The customer had the line checked out by an electrician.  The electrician said that the line was fine.     The only other devices on the same circuit were the fluorescent lights in the same room.  I left a plain APC surge suppressor on the outlet for several weeks and it was fine.  I replaced the APC surge suppressor with a new APC UPS and the new unit was smoked in under 5 days again.  This time, the customer had the electrician run an isolated line back to the outlet so that no other devices shared the same circuit.  This fixed the problem.  I put a new UPS on the outlet and it’s been working great ever since.  I’ve spoken with an electrician about this problem since and possibly the problem was caused by the fluorescent lights. Symptom:  A user had a computer that religiously shut itself off between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM every morning I fixed it by installing a UPS.  Evidently there must have been some transformer or other big piece of equipment sharing the same circuit that performed some sort of cycle during the same time everyday. Symptom:  Computer intermittently played Mozart’s “Fur Elise” The computer would suddenly starting playing Mozart’s “Fur Elise” (this is the same tune used in the old TV ads for the Commodore 64 computer).  The user would shut it off and turn it back it and usually the computer would keep playing the tune.  I thought that this problem was going to be virus-related, but the system had up-to-date antivirus software and it reported that the computer was clean.  Believe it or not, the problem ended being a caused by a weak CPU fan.  A company named DFI manufactured the system board.  DFI’s system board monitors the temperature of the CPU, RPMs of the CPU fan, and voltage from the power supply.  When it detects a problem with the CPU, the fan, or the power supply, it plays “Fur Elise” to let the user know that there’s a problem.  The CPU fan was spinning, but it wasn’t very strong.  I replaced the CPU fan and this fixed the problem. Symptom: Computer randomly reboots itself The user had a DEC Digital PC 3000 which included a Pentium II processor and Windows 98.  It would randomly reboot itself without giving any error messages.  Sometime it would go for several days without problem.  Other days it would reboot itself every 15 minutes or so.  The problem turned out to be a weak power supply.  DEC only supplied a 90-Watt power supply for this computer from the factory.  This power supply was much too small!  It’s surprising that the computer ran at all.  To make matters worse, DEC used a proprietary form factor for the power supply and I couldn’t find another power supply with the same dimensions.  I ended up getting a 145-Watt power supply that had dimensions that weren’t too much bigger than the original power supply.  I was able to finagle it to fit in the case.  This fixed the problem. Symptom: Computer was getting really slow throughput on a cable modem A customer had a Sony VAIO laptop hooked to a cable modem and it was really slow when browsing the web.  I went to www.cnet.com and ran their bandwidth test a few times.  Sure enough, this computer was only getting 59 kbps, which is slightly better than a really good connection on a 56K modem.  The cable modem should have been getting 500 Kbps or higher.  I went to www.speedguide.net and downloaded their TCPOPtimizer program.  I ran the TCPOPtimizer program and had it configure the network settings for optimal throughput for a cable modem.  This fixed the problem.  I ran another bandwidth test at www.cnet.com and the modem had a throughput of 940 Kbps.  This customer used to use a dial-up Internet Service Provider before he got his cable modem.  During this time, he remembered running some software that optimized his network throughput for dial-up service via a modem.  When he switched to a cable modem, those old settings for the dial-up service were still being used. Symptom:  Internet Explorer kept crashing and prompting the user to send a report of the error to Microsoft This computer was running Windows ME with Internet Explorer 5.5 Service Pack 2.  Internet Explorer would crash as soon as you tried to run it.  It wouldn’t give a specific error message, but instead told the user that an error had occurred and prompted the user to send the error to Microsoft.  When the user tried to view the Error Report, the window would just disappear.  I tried several remedies including reinstalling Internet Explorer, but this didn’t help.  I finally fixed the problem by uninstalling the following programs from the computer: • Connect2Party • Gator • Hotbar.com • IMesh Ads-Support • New.net Domains 3.88 • SaveNow • Support5 • BroadJump Client Foundation • ComcastSupport • Computer Cop Unfortunately, I had uninstalled all of the programs above in a single step, so I can’t say exactly which one was the culprit.  Most of the applications are either “Spy-Ware” or some other Internet-related application that installs from the Internet and interacts with the web browser. Symptom:  Internet Explorer kept crashing with an Invalid Page Fault error. A Windows 98 computer would get the following error whenever Internet Explorer was opened: “Iexplore caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown> at 0000:00d414c0”. Installing a newer version of Internet Explorer didn’t help.  I ended up fixing the problem by uninstalling “New.Net” which is an Internet-related application that interacts with Internet Explorer.  For more details about this type of problem, see Microsoft’s KnowledgeBase article # Q302463.   Symptom:  A Windows 95 PC would always freeze while shutting down This computer was a Dell Latitude laptop that was running Windows 95.  No matter what, this computer would freeze during shutdown process.  The user would end up shutting off the computer using the power button and then the next time the computer started, Scandisk would automatically run.  I tried numerous fixes, but nothing worked.  Ultimately I fixed the problem by upgrading Internet Explorer 4.0 to version 4.01 Service Pack 2, believe it or not.  The problem was caused by a bug in the Active Desktop component of Internet Explorer.  The funny thing is that the user never even accessed the Internet from this computer and therefore never used Internet Explorer.  See Microsoft KnowledgeBase article # Q178941 for more details about this issue.