Mike Meyers on: Tools of the PC Trade - Are You Prepared for Anything?

A big question I get from almost every baby tech out there is Mike: what tools do you own to do the job of PC repair? Well, the right answer is, is this is the only real tool that I need, I would say - probably 80, maybe even close to 90 percent of all the actual repairs. I do have nothing more than me typing on a keyboard. However, there are some tools out here. Now keep in mind throughout this entire series, I'm going to be talking about zillions of different software tools in this episode. What we're concentrating on are the hardware tools that I keep around now. Normally, when I walk up to somebody, I'm only going to have two things on me: I'm gon na have my phone and I'm gon na have a number two phillips screwdriver between these two devices. I can pretty much cover most the problems i run into a number two phillips screwdriver will get you into just about any system can take out just about any component and the phone. Well, that's for me to do research when i'm finding different types of problems. I'M typing in here pulling up manuals doing whatever i need to do to be able to figure out a problem so between these two tools, this is probably the bulk of all I ever need. However, there are some other toys out there. have a peek at this web-site want you to be aware of starting off over here. This is a very traditional. In fact, this is a very old toolkit. One of the things that I like about this toolkit, though, is it comes with this nut driver. Then I have all these different types of bits that I can put in there for everything from straight to different size of Phillips to torque PSA's and all these other kind of strange little connectors that we see on mobile devices. It works out pretty good another tool that I use. A lot is going to be these hemostats. I am constantly dropping screws down into systems and these he mows have helped me out a number of times being able to extract screws. No, I'm speaking of that. A pair of little tweezers like this can often be really handy for pretty much the exact same reason. Now, there's a few old things in here now: I'm gon na bring these up to you just because they still sell these kits, but you're never gon na need them. This is an IC inserter. It'S designed to plug in integrated circuits. This thing is ancient and I should probably throw it away, but it's got a spot on it, so I leave it in there now for almost anything, I'm doing it on a desktop system and a number of laptops that little tool kit is going to cover pretty Much anything I need, however, I do a lot of work with mobile devices and I'm, if I'm messing with tablets or I'm messing with smartphones, I'm gon na need some type of specialized tool kit and that's what this is right here. This tool kit comes from a company called iFixit, and no, they don't pay me any money. I just like their stuff and what really excites me about these guys are these nut drivers that they put in here. So we've got all of these different specialized know. If you guys could even zoom in on that, but look at all these different types of connectors. If you've got any interest and working on mobile devices, every little smartphone, every little tablets got its own weird little screws. It needs its own little bit and iFixit provides these. I love these things and I use it all the time now, while we're looking at this. If you look over here, these little devices are designed to help pry open tablets and smartphones they're known generically as spudger z' is the official name for these guys and they're just a little prize that we used to pry stuff open and then we've got some little. He mows over here just as well, and these guys just helped me hold on to little tiny teeny components, and I also have a few more pry bars over here. Pry bars are different than spud Jers and that they're all always going to be plastic like this and they're, designed to. If I try to split open a smartphone, for example I'll put a number of these in here. So these are the tools that I tend to carry around, but there's a few other things that I want to make mention of now. We will re reference these tools in other episodes in this series, I'm just trying to give you an overview at this point. One of the big ones right here is a voltage tester. So what I've got here is a standard voltage tester here in the US. It'S a nice little three prong vulture's testers are absolutely fantastic, because one of the biggest problems we run into is that the electricity that we're provided is often bad in and of itself. Speaking of this is a volt reader. I use volt ohm meters mainly to test electrical circuitry, that's coming from a house or something like that. However, there are a few situations and we'll go into some episodes to discuss where you can use a volt meter actually on a PC itself now. The last thing I want to talk about it is an important one, and it's these guys right here. Nothing special on here - these are thumb drives. Any good technician over time is going to start getting their own stack of software and, as I've already said in this series, we'll be going over all kinds of the software that I use. I generically call them cool tools and you might find yourself wanting to add all of these and putting them on your own thumb drive. So when it comes to thumb, drives, I'm gon na have one thumb drive that has my tools on it. Whatever those tools might be, I have another thumb: drive, that's going to be an anti-malware thumb. Drive anti-malware is a big part of my job and I have one thumb drive I can plug it in. I could boot off of this and I can use anti-malware tools to clean a system, so this is Mike's basic toolkit. Now, keep in mind stay with me through the series you're gon na see more than this, but the tools that you're seeing right here on this table right now take care of about 99.9 % of all the situations that I run into so go get yourself a Tool kit, [, Music, ]