From the course: CompTIA A+ Core 1 (220-1101) Cert Prep

Tools of the trade

From the course: CompTIA A+ Core 1 (220-1101) Cert Prep

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Tools of the trade

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- 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% 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 going to have my phone and I'm going to have a number two Phillips screwdriver. Between these two devices, I can pretty much cover most of 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 I 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 and I have all these different types of bits that I can put in there for everything from straight to different size of Phillips to Torxes 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 hemos have helped me out a number of times, being able to extract screws. And while 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 going to bring these up to you just because they still sell these kits, but you're never going to 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 on a desktop system and a number of laptops, that little toolkit is going to cover pretty much anything I need. However, I do a lot of work with mobile devices and if I'm messing with tablets, or I'm messing with smartphones, I'm going to need some type of specialized toolkit and that's what this is right here. This toolkit 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, I dunno if you guys could even zoom in on that, but look at all these different types of connectors. If you've got any interest in working on mobile devices, every little smartphone, every little tablet's got its own weird little screws and 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 spudgers is the official name for these guys. And they're just little pries that we use to pry stuff open. And then we've got some little hemos over here just as well and these guys just help me hold on to little tiny, teeny components, and I also have a few more pry bars over here. Pry bars are different than spudgers in that they're always going to be plastic like this and they're designed to, if I'm trying 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. Voltage testers are absolutely fantastic 'cause 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/ohm meter. 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/ohm meter actually on a PC itself. Now the last thing I want to talk about 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 going to 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 can 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 going to 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 toolkit.

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