How does our service work?

You can call or email us and state what service you need. You have the choice of dropping off your computer at our location, us coming to pick it up for you for a small fee, or we will come to your house and fix it on site.

After making an assessment of which service is needed we will set up an on site appointment at a time which is convenient for you. The representative will tell you how to prepare for our IT Technician

Is there anything that I need to prepare myself before an IT Technician arrives?

Yes, actually there are a number of things. You should always have the installation CDs handy that came with your PC when an IT Technician arrives. In addition any devices / components that need to be installed should be present at the time of arrival, unless different arrangements were made. Most importantly, you should always back up your data before any work is done to your PC.

What forms of payment does King Country Computers Accept?

We accept cash, cheque, EFTPOS, Visa, Mastercard & Qcard

Do you repair laptops?

For the most cases the answer is yes. However because laptops are built to be compact and not modular like desktop computers the hardware repair we can do is limited to a certain degree.

Here are the things are we can do on laptops:

Fixing all software related issues.

How much is does it cost for a house call?

House calls and all other services provided by us is $100/hr with the minimum charge of $50. There is an onsite fee of $50 and if you live out side of the service area travel is charged at $1.25 per kilometre.

Based on our records the average housecall takes about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. So the typical cost is $150, or $200

If a replacement part is needed it is added to the total cost of the repair at the price we purchased it (including the sales tax) 

My computer is slow. What is the reason for this?

Basically there are a couple of reasons:

First one is: viruses. These are programs that are running on your computer in the background without showing anything on your screen. They use up your computers resources and thus making it slow.

Second one is: too many installed programs. Unfortunately there are a lot of software that installs components that start every time that you restart your computer. These are responsible for the long wait when you start your system or log in. For example Kodak Easyshare software is a bad offender on this. It starts 3 or 4 components which stay in the memory afterwards.

So if you want to have a fast system then you need to get rid of these start-up programs. In fact only very few are actually needed, if any. Actually we have computers which have no extra programs starting up automatically and they work just fine (and fast).

Third one is: certain antivirus software. We're sorry to say but we found several cases where the antivirus software caused the computer to run slowly. It's particularly common with Comcast customers who can get McAfee for free with their high speed internet service. For McAfee to run well without noticeably affecting the performance of the computer it needs a system with a very fast processor and a great deal of internal memory. Downloading it to a system designed for Windows 98 almost certainly will result in a very sluggish computer. Another offender is Norton Internet Security

The reason for this is the use of system resources by these softwares. They keep many functions of the system under watch and they keep their virus identification databases in the memory. This results in less processor time and memory available for other applications. So if there are plenty of these resources you won't notice much slowdown but if you are not so lucky then your system could get extremely slow.

The brute force solution to this is to get a better computer, or more memory. However there are another alternatives, another, freely available antivirus software that does not 'hog' system resources while provides nearly as much protection as these 'giants'. With some additional security configurations the system can be made very safe without the degradation of performance.

We can help you take care of these issues and make your computer run at its top speed.

Are there any problems that King Country Computers doesn't fix?

Unfortunately, yes. There are some cases which require very special equipment to handle. These include things like recovering data from an inoperational hard drive, diagnosing laptops with internal hardware problems. In these cases we refer to the specialized service that handles the issues.

What is Malware?

Malware, or "Malicious Software," is simply a blanket term for any software created for a purpose viewed as malicious or unethical. "Malware" can be used to refer to Viruses, Spy-ware and Ad-ware. "Viruses" are programs which duplicate themselves from computer to computer and perform whatever function for which they were programmed. "Spy-ware" is usually used by unethical individuals or companies to retrieve personal information about computer users, whether it be statistical or financial. "Ad-ware" is often packaged with other applications, which you may have found online for free, and causes pop-up ads to be displayed on your monitor.

How can I keep my computer from crashing?

There are many variables which may contribute to the corruption of a computer's data. Like any other machine, the most effective way to ensure your computer's stability is to have it cleaned and inspected as often as possible.

Are my deleted files gone forever?

When you delete a file, even if you empty the recycle bin, under the right circumstances it can still be recovered using File Recovery tools. This is both a blessing and a burdern: If you delete a file by mistake, it may be possible to recover your file. However, if you delete a file you don't want anyone seeing, it's likewise possible someone else can recover that file. There are special applications you can use to delete a file permanently (for all intensive purposes.)