Computer Repair Services

Having a computer problem? Need some computer repair? Have a virus, computer not starting, hearing loud noises, hear a clicking sound or any one of a number of other abnormal issues? The Tech Bytes staff can help with your computer repair or tune-up services.? The Tech Bytes staff can help with your computer repair or tune-up services. Our professional staff can diagnose your computer issues for you and get you back up and running in no time. 

Tech Bytes, LLC is located in the quad cities, heart of the Iron Range – Eveleth, Minnesota. Being located in Eveleth, we are only minutes away from Virginia, Gilbert, Mountain Iron, and other cities such as Biwabik, Aurora, McDavitt, Tower, Embarrass, Babbitt, Buhl, Hibbing, Duluth and others are within a 50 mile radius of us. We can provide you services at our shop in Eveleth, at your business or even remotely. With a stable internet connection and your computer connecting to it, we also offer remote connections for computer repair.

Computer Have a Virus

Does your computer have a virus? If it does, we can help you out. The first thing you should do is contact us and we can help you diagnose the severity of the virus. Most viruses we are able to remove and then you can continue to use your computer as normal. There are a few viruses out there, such as the Cryptowall virus which require a re-installation of the Operating System. The chances of recovering encrypted files are low. Tech Bytes has been able to recover some, but more times than not the data is lost. We are very thorough on our scans and we use several malware/virus scanners to be thorough. We run the scanners until there are no more threats found.

Have you been scammed?

A screen pops up and you cannot do anything to close it out. The only option is to call the phone number that is on the popup. If you called this number and let the person on your computer, you have been scammed. Please remember, that none of them (Microsoft, FBI, IRS) will ever call you and they won’t have a popup on your computer asking you to call them. If you ever see one of these screens, do not call them, instead try to end the task, which will in turn close out this window.

To end the task, you can press the windows key + R. Type in the command taskmgr and click Run. You will have a screen come up, where you can right click on the browser you are using (such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge) and end the task. After ending the task on all occurrences of the browser your popup that was on the screen will be gone. As long as you didn’t let anyone on your computer, you should be just fine. If you have let someone who called you, or you got their phone number from a popup, it would a really good idea to get your computer checked out to make sure there are no backdoors set up on your computer.

Startup Issues?

So you press the power button and your computer won’t start. Does any power come on at all, does it start part way up or maybe it keeps restarting. If there does not seem to be any power, you will want to make sure the power cable is plugged in and there is power to the outlet. Press the cable in to make sure it is tight. If there is power to the outlet, and computer is not turning on, it could be a few things but most likely the power supply.

Computer Making Noises?

Different noises than normal are heard while running. What kind of noise is it? Is it a clicking noise, a loud steady noise or something else? Maybe the drive is making a clicking noise, it very well could be your hard drive. If it is your hard drive, and your computer turned on all the way, we strongly suggest making a backup of all your data immediately. Hard drive failure may be imminent and could happen at any time once it starts making the clicking noise. Need us to help with your backup? Send us your hard drive or bring it or your machine in to the office and we can put your data onto a flash drive or an external drive.

If your fan is making the noise, you will want to replace the fan as soon as possible. When the insides of a computer get too warm, they won’t last as long and overheat different components of your computer.

Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)

While turning on your computer or while using it, get a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). You are unable to use your computer reliably as this happens too often. Blue screens could be cause by mis-configured software, a corrupted update or failing hardware. Tech Bytes can help pinpoint the issue and fix the computer. Many times, the blue screen of death will contain stop codes which will sometimes help narrow down the issues.

Computer running slowly, needing a tune-up?

If your computer is running slower than normal these days, you can bring it in to us and we’ll optimize it to perform at its peak performance. This includes cleaning the hardware as well as cleaning up the OS- making sure there is no malware or viruses, running windows updates, fixing registry issues- and more. If the computer is still slow after the tune-up, we could see if more RAM may help speed things up or if there are any other hardware improvements we might be able to make. Prior to us doing the tune-up, we will take a look at the specs of the computer and tell you if we believe it is worth fixing the computer or purchasing a new one.

Has your computer been acting funny, do you have popups constantly popping up while you’re on your computer? If so, there is a good chance that you have malware or a virus on your computer. We run multiple programs to ensure your machine is malware- and virus-free. When we clean up the computer we run thorough scans, some of which can take hours to run – but of course this all depends on the specs of your computer. On average it takes 2-3 days for us to do a complete cleanup on the computer. We could run scans more quickly and get your computer fairly clean, but we would rather be certain your computer is thoroughly clean before we return it to you.

Even though some of the scans can take hours, we have a flat fee that we charge for cleaning computers of malware so as long as there are no hardware issues, you will know what the price is before we start working on it. If we find there is also a hardware issue, we will contact you before we do anything to see what you would like us to do next.

Did your dog run across your laptop? Did someone step on it, or did you drop it and crack the screen? If your laptop screen is broken, no matter how it was done, we can fix it. If you bring it in to the office or get us the manufacturer & model we can give you an estimate on how much it would cost to replace. In some instances, we have to completely take the screen off before we can proceed as some models may carry different screens and we need to get the correct product number so we can accurately estimate this for you.

In most cases, we will have to order the laptop screen and once that comes in we will then replace it. It normally takes less than two hours to replace the screen, but of course there are exceptions to this as well.

Do you keep files on your computer? Are they important? Do you have a data backup? These are just some of the questions we will ask about your data.

What would happen should the hard drive on the computer you primarily use all of a sudden fail? If you’re like most of us, the failure could be catastrophic. Maybe your entire business is run and all of the files you need are on that hard drive. Maybe all of your kids pictures from when they were young or your parents pictures were on there and it is the only copy you have. These are just a couple of the main things we hear at quite often when a computer comes in and does not work. In most cases we have been able to recover these documents, but the best way to solve this issue is to always have a data backup plan.

There are a few ways you can backup your data. You could manually copy your documents to a flash drive or an external hard drive, use cloud based software or even software to backup to an external hard drive. We have the hardware and the software for backing up your data securely. Stop by our office, give us a call or send us a message for more information.

Tech Bytes offers two methods of backup services. The first method is a cloud-based backup. With our cloud backup, you choose which files you would like backed up nightly and then each night (or your chosen time of the day) the backup runs and makes sure your files are securely stored. This will protect you if the hard drive fails, in case there is a fire or any other disaster that could occur and potentially destroy your location. We normally recommend this method when there is not lots of space needed for the backup and for important documents that should not only be kept on site. It is a great idea to have more than 1 backup, and it is recommended that there are 3 sets of data, your main data, an offsite backup (such as cloud) and a local backup.

The other method is another local backup. This is a one-time cost for the software and a hard drive. The software will back up the majority of your hard drive (skipping the windows files, temp files and whatnot). Your important files would be backed up nightly onto your local hard drive. This is a great way to protect you in the case of a hard drive failure or a damaging virus. The nice thing about local backups are they are much quicker to restore in the case of disaster. With the software we use for local backups, there is another option outside of just backing up your data. You could get a hard drive of the same size and set it up so that it does a mirror image of the hard drive. This way, if your main hard drive fails, you can just unplug your main hard drive, and put this secondary hard drive in its place and your up and running.

If you are interested in any of these data backup services, send us a message or give us a call and we would be happy to help you decide the best method for backing up your data.

Which backup method should we use?

Deciding which method of back you should use is mostly a personal decision. Of course it is best to have multiple copies of your files and also have a copy of your data off-site in case of disaster. If you don’t have many files and they don’t change very often, we would suggest using a flash drive and manually copy your files when you make changes. We would suggest using a couple of different flash drives and have one at a secure location offsite – such as your house or a lock box at your bank.

If you are working with lots of files, or just don’t have much time, then the cloud data backup is a great way to backup your data. Using the cloud backup, the only thing you have to do is make sure that your computer is on and has a stable internet connection when the scheduled time for the backup comes around. You would not have to do anything for the backups and there would be a couple of possible revisions of the files stored. Then if you delete a file accidentally or incorrectly edit a file, you could actually re-download it and have your data back (of course there are limitations to this on if the backups have all been overwritten or it’s been too long since the change was made). Cloud backups seem to work great when working with documents such as word & excel type files. Cloud backups have a monthly subscription requirements.

So you have either many gigabits of data or you don’t want to have a subscription to a cloud backup. Well, you can backup your data using software on your computer to an external hard drive. This software we use, called Acronis, has worked great for us and many of our customers. You purchase the software from us and an external hard drive and we will set it up to keep a couple of full backups and a few revisions of each before it starts removing the oldest versions. Local backups work really good for people who have lots of data, such as photographers or people who work with lots of large images.