Wicked I.T. was established by four technology graduates and an industry veteran who realized that home and business computer users wanted a different approach to meeting their on site computer service and equipment installation requirements. Customers told us that they were tired of calling for service and having to wade through 3 levels of voice menus before reaching a person who could get someone to their location that could actually aid them with their problem.
Reviews (1)
Joseph Daniele
Jul 20, 2009
From my Live Journal post: (caution-long and detailed)
The Tech Update. Around June or so of last year after it took me 15 tries
to boot up the notebook and find the operating system,
i figured that it was likely the HD. I ran all sorts of anti-malware. No boot sector problems,
no corrupt bios, nothing.
Narrowed it down to a failing HD. Okay as long as i don't
shut it down, sort of like a car engine with a bad starter,
will run as long as you don't turn it off.
But on Thanksgiving i not only had errors in processes running
to clear with a restart, but my dsl modem needed rebooting too,
something i have to do whenever Verizon loses service even for a short time. So i shut the notebook and modem down, waited 3 minutes, then wound up waiting 7 months. Not so much as a flicker of the HD light nor sound of a spinup.
Finally, after saving some money and getting tired of watching out
for shoulder surfers and deleting all traces of where i was at log-in sites
during one hour sessions at the library i went to Best Buy
after a quick look at notebooks on Amazon.
Instant dismay.
I was looking for a notebook in the medium price range.
(700-800 max if i totally used up a credit card at high APR),
there were 3-400 dollar starter notebooks but they were trashy)
I hated Vista, buggy and uses twice the resources of an XP system. But then i found out about Windows 7 which is supposed to fix the
problems of Vista, yet will use twice the resources of Vista.
Free upgrades to Windows 7 didn't impress me. Would need a more powerful
notebook with proper firmware drivers, etc and give time for Windows 7
to sort itself out. And when did shiny cheap plastic become acceptable in notebooks,
seemed a general drop in quality. The new wide screen notebooks look weird. 16:9 aspect ratio is fine
for a tv but leaves the keyboard looking lost.
(and the keys are now flat,cheaply made
with no cups for fingertips and poor stamping of letters, etc.)
Geek Squad wouldn't/couldn't fix my Sony Vaio while i waited
and i would not leave it with them for two days. Paranoid about privacy.
Left without buying anything. So i hunted down computer services that come to your place and found one i liked
after talking with them (no voice mail-got a human right away :)
and explaining the technical problems. They seemed pros.
Figured it's a lot cheaper to pay for repairing an otherwise good XP machine
than settling for what i saw and could afford at Best Buy.
Guy from WickedIT arrived Saturday, July 11. He listened to me while checking bios and trying recovery cds,
and came to the same diagnosis that i had.
Swapped out my old Hitachi made 40 gig EIDE HD for a WD Scorpio Blue EIDE 160 Gig HD,
installed the 256 meg Kingston Ram chip i had bought to double my Ram to 526 Meg,
reinstalled XP from my recovery discs, installed FireFox 3.5, installed Foxit reader as a sub for Adobe Acrobat.
My Ethernet wouldn't install, so he configured a no hassle (no Windows
stop error by unknown driver some 200 times 'tween 2005-2007 till Verizon installed a Not One Size Fits All driver for USB) USB connection using minimal Verizon files from the CD-rom
i still had. Left other apps up to me. He downloaded XP SP 2 for Pro/IT and since i knew how to finish
it, he left to save me an hour extra.
Came to 214..
No charge for travel to Cambridge. I've just looked them up, they have a very high rating here:
http://www.computerrepairexpert.com/in/boston-ma
I went over the system carefully, installed Windows Defender, headed off any
high CPU usage by MsMpEng.exe in conflict with Avast by telling it not to check
its own folder path.
Installed Avast Home Edition Virus Scanner (best of the free ones)
Told XP firewall to block TGCMD module which is practically spyware though Sony, etc
claim it's not. Yeah, it has access to your entire computer and can send info out.
Finally got my Mail client to work two days ago when i discovered that Verizon had
blocked port 25 to stop spam. I put the new port in and it works fine.
Downloaded 1450 emails from the Verizon web mail.
Trying to decide to open and use WMP 9 (i had WMP 11 a year or two ago but it was bloated) with the Divx Installer. And whether to re-install the Sony Vaio firmware drivers from app recovery cd. The ones with XP seem ok so far. Uninstalled most of the useless Sony Programs. I've not put in the backed up data yet. Have to reorganize it first. And that's the update :)
The Tech Update. Around June or so of last year after it took me 15 tries
to boot up the notebook and find the operating system,
i figured that it was likely the HD. I ran all sorts of anti-malware. No boot sector problems,
no corrupt bios, nothing.
Narrowed it down to a failing HD. Okay as long as i don't
shut it down, sort of like a car engine with a bad starter,
will run as long as you don't turn it off.
But on Thanksgiving i not only had errors in processes running
to clear with a restart, but my dsl modem needed rebooting too,
something i have to do whenever Verizon loses service even for a short time. So i shut the notebook and modem down, waited 3 minutes, then wound up waiting 7 months. Not so much as a flicker of the HD light nor sound of a spinup.
Finally, after saving some money and getting tired of watching out
for shoulder surfers and deleting all traces of where i was at log-in sites
during one hour sessions at the library i went to Best Buy
after a quick look at notebooks on Amazon.
Instant dismay.
I was looking for a notebook in the medium price range.
(700-800 max if i totally used up a credit card at high APR),
there were 3-400 dollar starter notebooks but they were trashy)
I hated Vista, buggy and uses twice the resources of an XP system. But then i found out about Windows 7 which is supposed to fix the
problems of Vista, yet will use twice the resources of Vista.
Free upgrades to Windows 7 didn't impress me. Would need a more powerful
notebook with proper firmware drivers, etc and give time for Windows 7
to sort itself out. And when did shiny cheap plastic become acceptable in notebooks,
seemed a general drop in quality. The new wide screen notebooks look weird. 16:9 aspect ratio is fine
for a tv but leaves the keyboard looking lost.
(and the keys are now flat,cheaply made
with no cups for fingertips and poor stamping of letters, etc.)
Geek Squad wouldn't/couldn't fix my Sony Vaio while i waited
and i would not leave it with them for two days. Paranoid about privacy.
Left without buying anything. So i hunted down computer services that come to your place and found one i liked
after talking with them (no voice mail-got a human right away :)
and explaining the technical problems. They seemed pros.
Figured it's a lot cheaper to pay for repairing an otherwise good XP machine
than settling for what i saw and could afford at Best Buy.
Guy from WickedIT arrived Saturday, July 11. He listened to me while checking bios and trying recovery cds,
and came to the same diagnosis that i had.
Swapped out my old Hitachi made 40 gig EIDE HD for a WD Scorpio Blue EIDE 160 Gig HD,
installed the 256 meg Kingston Ram chip i had bought to double my Ram to 526 Meg,
reinstalled XP from my recovery discs, installed FireFox 3.5, installed Foxit reader as a sub for Adobe Acrobat.
My Ethernet wouldn't install, so he configured a no hassle (no Windows
stop error by unknown driver some 200 times 'tween 2005-2007 till Verizon installed a Not One Size Fits All driver for USB) USB connection using minimal Verizon files from the CD-rom
i still had. Left other apps up to me. He downloaded XP SP 2 for Pro/IT and since i knew how to finish
it, he left to save me an hour extra.
Came to 214..
No charge for travel to Cambridge. I've just looked them up, they have a very high rating here:
http://www.computerrepairexpert.com/in/boston-ma
I went over the system carefully, installed Windows Defender, headed off any
high CPU usage by MsMpEng.exe in conflict with Avast by telling it not to check
its own folder path.
Installed Avast Home Edition Virus Scanner (best of the free ones)
Told XP firewall to block TGCMD module which is practically spyware though Sony, etc
claim it's not. Yeah, it has access to your entire computer and can send info out.
Finally got my Mail client to work two days ago when i discovered that Verizon had
blocked port 25 to stop spam. I put the new port in and it works fine.
Downloaded 1450 emails from the Verizon web mail.
Trying to decide to open and use WMP 9 (i had WMP 11 a year or two ago but it was bloated) with the Divx Installer. And whether to re-install the Sony Vaio firmware drivers from app recovery cd. The ones with XP seem ok so far. Uninstalled most of the useless Sony Programs. I've not put in the backed up data yet. Have to reorganize it first. And that's the update :)
