About

Protec-IT offers Thunder Bay and the surrounding area fast, quality repair services for cell phones, tablets, laptops, gaming consoles, and most small electronics.  Our main focus for the last 7 years has been on data recovery, board-level repairs, and liquid damage for any consumer electronics.

 

Getting your device back to you fast is always our goal.  We do our best to stock all the parts needed for our repairs to speed up our turnaround time. All our parts are purchased directly from the manufacturer, and if this is not possible, we source parts of the same quality as the manufacturer.  We aim to ensure quality parts at competitive prices.

 

We know communication is an important part of excellent customer service.  We always try to answer your phone calls and keep our customers updated.  We provide excellent customer service before, during and after the device is repaired.  If there are any issues after the repair we will stand by our work and make it right.  Our business is based on Integrity and honesty, you will never get any surprise bills here. 

 

We strive to offer our customers affordable pricing. Please keep in mind the rates reflect our highly specialized skill set, advanced tools, quality of parts and the level of warranty we provide. 

 

We also offer an electronics recycling program where you can exchange old/broken devices for repair discounts while helping the environment. We recycle E-waste responsibly.

 

                                 Canadian owned and operated.

iPhone Data Recovery

Getting liquid in your cell phone or tablet feels horrible, The idea of losing your treasured memories and valuable files stored on your device can have anyone panicking. We understand this and have been helping people get their data back for the last 7 years!

Many of the cell phone / tablet manufacturers in the last few years have been encrypting your important data such as pictures, videos, ect. This adds security, but this also adds extra steps and tools required to complete a data recovery job.  In some cases this can even prevent the ability to recover the data.

 

Our cell phone & tablet data recovery process:

 

 

 

1. First we will attempt to extract the data directly from the chip that stores all the data, if it is NOT encrypted. 

 

 

2. If however the device is encrypted, we are forced to find and repair all faults that prevent the device from booting. Here we are testing this capacitor to eleminate the fault in this circuit.

 

3. After we deem it safe to power the device on, we then proceed with extracting all your important documents. In this example we have placed a iPhone 4 board in a test unit to allow us to connect it to our machines and retrieve their data.

                         Please Note: We do NOT provide liquid damage repair to any mobile devices.
Liquid Damage Repair

Have you spilled liquid on your MacBook or other laptop? People often think this is not repairable and you need to replace the whole motherboard or buy a new laptop. We have a high success rate repairing boards, specializing in these repairs and honed our skillset over the last 7 years.

 

Here is our motherboard repair process:

 

 

1. Inspection and diagnostic: The motherboard is taken out and is inspected under a microscope and measurements are taken to determine what the fault is.

2. Required repairs are performed: After being diagnosed, the damaged and/or corroded components are replaced and any further repairs such as trace repairs are performed. So think of us repairing all the roads so all the buses can get to all the bus stops taking the people who need to goto work. The tracks are the roads for communication, the people are the electricity, and the businesses are the chips that perform functions and need to speak to one another via these tracks.

3. Ultrasonic cleaning: After all faults are addressed, the board is put through an ultrasonic cleaner that removes all the left over flux and any residual corrosion under the larger chips. As we mentioned on our Liquid Damage page, when any type of liquid contacts the electronics inside the device they start to rust. Just like a car if you don't address this rust, it will continue to spread and cause further damage. The ultrasonic machine removes the rust in places you would not be able to access such as under really complex chips.

Liquid Damage

Liquid damage occurs when an electronic device comes into contact with liquid.  You find a lot of misinformation online and in some repair shops about how to fix this.  My goal here is to clarify this topic by outlining a couple common misconceptions and explaining some best practices.

 

WHAT ARE THE MISCONCEPTIONS?

 

    1. Probably the biggest misconception is that simply drying the device will fix it.  

Awhile ago I saw a add for a machine that is meant to dry your device and thus fix the liquid damage.  The damage is not from the water itself but rather the impurities in the water.  So simply drying the device doesn't remove these and damage will continue to occur similar to when a car starts to rust, and the only way to stop it is to cut it out and put new steel in place.  This method also does not deal with components on the electrical board that have been damaged if the device has had any power flow through it.

    2. The second misconception is that putting the device in a bowl of rice will fix it. No matter where I go I hear or read someone suggesting to use rice.

DON’T EVER USE RICE!

Drying a device using rice, cat litter, silica or simple heat leaves behind those impurities contained in the water.  This causes damage, but it might take days or months for it to become apparent.  One day you may wake up with no Wi-Fi, or the phone may not turn on, and if the damage is allowed to go unchecked it can become not economical to repair at all.  

    3. It can be deceiving when you drop liquid on your device clean it off and wow it still turns on.  It may seem fine but its not and the impurities I spoke about earlier have started damaging your device from the inside and will continue to get worse until you bring it in.  So remember time is of the essence here if you value your device or the data that is on it.

 

SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

 

   1. You need to remove all electricity. This means disconnecting the battery.  DO NOT plug in the charger, and if the device is already turned on,

TURN IT OFF!

This will prevent the electricity from interacting with those impurities and damaging your device further.  

    2. Take it to a QUALIFIED REPAIR CENTER - time is of the essence here the longer it takes the more damage happens.  From there the technician will desolder any parts that prevent them from cleaning and testing your device to address any shorts, faulty components or any other issues.  This whole process of disassembly, desoldering of protective shields, and testing the device needs to be done prior to turning the device on if you want to avoid further damage. This whole process can take days or weeks due to the complexity and how many other jobs the technician has in his queue.  So if ANY shop tells you they can do this in under an hour, it is SIMPLY NOT BEING DONE CORRECTLY.

If you get liquid on your device and you follow the above instructions -- 1) remove the electricity and 2) take it to a qualified tech in a TIMELY mannor – your chances of getting your device repaired quickley with everything working properly are much higher.


**ANY shops that are doing these type of repairs without understanding how to really address and repair them.  You are harming the repair industry, when you hand that customer back their device that is still faulty and it stops working for them a day later the chances of them trusting another independent repair center is less likely.  Please make sure you think about this before accepting these type of repairs.

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