Upgrading and Repairing PCs

Mueller opens his book with square-one information about opening a PC case--including a discussion of various screw types--and assembling a righteous set of tools. He quickly moves on to preventive maintenance and the guts of computer systems. Sections cover critical components (such as motherboards and CPUs), input/output devices, and mass storage components. A lot of the book's information has to do with buying replacement parts. (After all, if you find a solid state device to be faulty, you're going to have to replace it. The age of fix-all duct tape is gone.)

Upgrading & Repairing PCs, Eighth Edition, gives you the explanatory text and the technical charts you need to get your machine humming, but it describes technical details more than step-by step procedures. You'll find all kinds of pinout diagrams, POST beep-code charts, and a detailed glossary. A companion CD-ROM contains six electronic books that you can search for topics such as the Macintosh, networks, operating systems, and (interestingly) the fourth edition of Upgrading & Repairing PCs, which contains information about older hardware.