CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [23]
Stick to the timeline. If you finish more quickly, great! People love a job that goes faster than predicted. If you’re moving past the predicted time frame, contact the customer and tell them as soon as possible. Let them know what’s happened, why you’re going over, and give them a new time frame. The biggest secret here is to keep in communication with the customer on any change in status. People understand delays—they take place in our lives daily. People resent not knowing, especially when a precious computer is at stake.
Documentation
At the completion of work, document the problem, including the time and day you started work, the solution (again including the time and day the work ended), the hours worked, and a list of all parts replaced. If the customer owns the parts, offer them to the customer (this is especially true if you replace any storage media). This documentation may or may not include your charges.
Follow-up
I call follow-up the Lost Art: a simple follow-up, usually just a phone call, to confirm that the customer is happy with your work. This gives the customer a chance to detail any special issues that may have arisen and it also gives that final extra touch that ensures they will come to you again.
Safety and Tools
Effective communication with your customer enables you to start the troubleshooting process, getting details about the problem and clues about things that happened around the same time. To continue troubleshooting, though, you need to be adept at handling the computer. That starts with knowing how to handle computer components safely and how to use the tools of a tech. Let’s begin by identifying and discussing some of the problems you may run into and how to deal with them.
Electrostatic Discharge (ESD)
If you decide to open a PC while reading this chapter, as I encourage you to do, you must take proper steps to avoid the greatest killer of PCs: electrostatic discharge (ESD). ESD simply means the passage of a static electrical charge from one item to another. Have you ever rubbed a balloon against your shirt, making the balloon stick to you? That’s a classic example of static electricity. When that static charge discharges, you may not notice it happening—although on a cool, dry day, I’ve been shocked so hard by touching a doorknob that I could see a big, blue spark! I’ve never heard of a human being getting anything worse than a rather nasty shock from ESD, but I can’t say the same thing about computers. ESD will destroy the sensitive parts of your PC, so it is essential that you take steps to avoid ESD when working on your PC.
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NOTE All PCs are well protected against ESD on the outside. Unless you take a screwdriver and actually open up your PC, you don’t need to concern yourself with ESD.
Anti-static Tools
ESD only takes place when two objects that store different amounts (the hip electrical term to use is potential) of static electricity come in contact. The secret to avoiding ESD is to keep you and the parts of the PC you touch at the same electrical potential. You can accomplish this by connecting yourself to the PC via a handy little device called an anti-static wrist strap. This simple device consists of a wire that connects on one end to an alligator clip and on the other end to a small metal plate that secures to your wrist with an elastic strap. You snap the alligator clip onto any handy metal part of the PC and place the wrist strap on either wrist. Figure 2-6 shows a typical anti-static wrist strap in use.
Figure 2-6 Anti-static wrist strap in use
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EXAM TIP Static electricity, and therefore the risk of ESD, is much more prevalent in dry, cool environments.
Anti-static wrist straps are standard equipment for anyone working on a PC, but other