Laser Printer Color Drum Drive Assemblies

A customer brought in an HP Color LaserJet 5550 printer to Terminal to be repaired.  It had been in an environment that had concrete dust in the air and was making a hideous grinding noise.

The problem turned out to be all three Color Drum Drive Assemblies being worn, with the Cyan being the worst with a 200T gear also being worn. All three Color Drum Drive Assemblies had their Motor Drive Gears worn away.  The concrete dust acted like a grinding compound. The service manual for the HP CLJ 5550 does not have a procedure for replacing the Drum Drive Assemblies.

I used my years of experience of working on laser printers, which goes back to when they first came out back in the day - when the Image Drums were driven by chains like a bike chain. I worked out the complicated procedure to replace all three Color Drum Drive Assemblies and replaced them. I also did an extensive PM to the HP CLJ 5550, cleaning all of the concrete dust. This turned out to be a expensive shop call, but the customer was very happy with the result and ended up with a great running color laser printer for printing his Cad Cam print jobs on for around one quarter of the cost of a new printer.

Joe Churma - Hardware Technician

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Welcome to the Tablet Takeover of 2012

If a tablet has not already taken over your life, start to make plans now. Forrester Research predicts that tablets will be the primary computing device for most users within four years, and several trends in 2012 support that argument.

Tablets will be more affordable. The iPad might always be a significant investment, but we expect most product lines to offer models below $250. In fact, Google plans to raise the bar--or lower it in this case--by offering a tablet closer to the $150 mark.

Tablets will be more powerful. They already have the hardware necessary for common computing, and it will only get better as quad-core processors become the new standard.

Tablets will do more. The latest iPad has some features that should excite any (potential) tablet user. It displays 2048 x 1536 resolution, types with voice dictation, takes 5-megapixel photos, shoots 1080 HD videos, and does it all for 10 hours at a time. Impressive.

Tablets will have more accessories. Studies show that the average tablet user relies on more accessories than laptop counterparts. Companies like Logitech are betting on that number to increase as they expand their tablet peripheral lines. Have you seen their new wireless solar keyboard case? That’s just the beginning.

Tablets will be at work. In our recent Bring Your Own Device post, we discussed the corporate inclusion of personal hardware. Early adopters are already rewriting their IT guidelines and you can expect more companies to follow. The lines between work and play are blurring as more professionals bring their tablets to the office.

All of these improvements will make the next two years an exciting time for tablets. With that in mind, here are several that we are particularly excited to see:

• Apple iPad Mini
• Google Nexus Tablet
• HP webOS Tablet

If you have any questions about which to buy and which to wait for, give us a call.

Sankaran Ganapathi

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Locked Out of Windows

Just recently, I had a client locked out of Microsoft Windows and they knew they had the right password and username. The user stated that they could log into Windows just a short time before and that they did not receive an error message or any message asking to change their password. So, like always, my first question was: What were you doing before you logged off last?

The user stated that they were on the phone with someone looking at their calendar to set up some appointments. Now this might seem harmless, right? Well, I know that when signing onto a domain in a workplace environment, if you were to accidently changing the date or time it can cause an issue with time and date syncing. If the time and date are too far off, which in most cases is more than 10 minutes, then once you log out of Windows and try to sign back in, you will not be able to. 

So on to the FIX.  If you can find the network cable on the back of your computer, you will need to remove it temporarilly. Now restart your machine and try to sign on as normal. If this does not work you may have to switch to your local computer account name, which you will find in a drop down list in Windows XP or you will have to click switch user and put the computer name before something like Administrator in Windows 7, for example for Windows 7(MyComputerName\Administrator), then type the Administrator password. 

Once your back onto the machine, using either method, you can then go ahead and change back the time and or date to the current date and time. This should complete the fix.

Don’t forget to plug the network cable back into the back of the computer. Next time you sign into your computer make sure you are signing into the domain which will again be in the drop down list in Windows XP or will look something like (DomainName\YourUserName). Now you may have to ask your Domain admin to unlock your account as well because in most cases, you have tried your password more than the allotted amount of times before you used this fix. Most companies have policies that will lock you out after so many wrong attempts. 

Dennis Foote – Systems Engineer

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Comparing Online Storage: Dropbox, Microsoft SkyDrive and Google Drive

This article updates a previous post called Free Online Space.

Cloud computing has been a popular topic on the Terminal blog lately, but most posts have focused on corporate IT interests. Today we would like to address the cloud computing needs of personal users. Best of all, we’re talking about everyone’s favorite word: free.

There are three leading online storage platforms that provide free service. First, we will look at Dropbox, the old favorite, then compare Microsoft SkyDrive and Google Drive, the two newbies. Here is a general overview of all three.

Dropbox was launched in 2008 and now has more than 50 million users. Free accounts provide 2 GB, less than half of the other two providers, but Dropbox’s simple, clean interface makes it easy to use and organize.

Microsoft SkyDrive is relatively new to most users, but has existed in various capacities since 2007. It offers 7 GB of free space, which is 2 GB more than Google and 5 GB more than Dropbox. Not surprisingly, SkyDrive synchronizes seamlessly with other Microsoft programs and is a good option for Windows users.

Google Drive has only officially existed since April 2012 but has attracted many users who rely on other Google services, like Gmail and Google Docs. Drive offers 5 GB of storage that are easy to use for anyone comfortable with the Google format.

Google Drive has received a lot of criticism for its loose privacy policies. That doesn't mean that it should be avoided, but we recommend that you read the terms of service and Lucas Mearian’s article in PC World before using it.

Now that you know a bit about each, it is time to award a valedictorian of free online storage. ZDNet writer Ed Bott testedDropbox, SkyDrive and Drive on four subjects. Each performed well, but one student excelled.

1. Synchronization and backup: All.
2. File sharing: All.
3. Content creation and editing: SkyDrive and Drive only.
4. Photo galleries: SkyDrive and Dropbox only.

So, there you have it. The clear winner is Microsoft SkyDrive with 7 GB of free storage, editing tools, multimedia galleries and a manageable interface.

If you would like more information about cloud computing, check out some other recent posts: Tips to reduce IT energy consumption, What is GovCloud? and What is The Cloud?

Sankaran Ganapathi

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!