Computer Problems?

Internet Security: (Password protection)

2011-08-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

Forgive me but I write todays post with a certain level of disgust at the lack of common sense when it comes to how people handle thier internet passwords!

The typical internet user when he or she signs up for some program online is ussually required supply an e-mail address and a password during the sign-up process, as well as thier name and various other details of thier person. The typical internet user will also fill out that form in perfect truthful detail thinking nothing of the fact that they are telling perfect strangers who they are, what their e-mail is AND (here it comes) more often than not they supply these strangers with the same password as is required to access thier e-mail. So this is what it boils down to. I give some one I dont know my name, my e-mail and the password to access my e-mail and then I become surprised when my e-mail gets hacked into and my identity stolen and all my friends and family in my e-mail contacts are also scammed because the hackers who broke into my e-mail e-mailed them and sent them viruses and trojans for stealing personal information, and they (my e-mail contacts) beleiving they are receiving an e-mail from me, happily opens the malware attachment andget thier identity stolen and the circle of identity theft is complete... Good job!(sarcasm)

friends I cant tell you how often thats been the case with my clients. Never EVER supply your e-mail password on any form which ALSO requires your e-mail address...

What to do then?

The answer is quite simple. Have more than one password which you can use for signing up for things.

In reality its a good practice to have about 5 passwords that you can rotate around depending on the situation. If a sign up form requires both an e-mail address and password no problem give them one of your passwords that is not used to access your e-mail otherwise if they dont require an e-mail address then you can give them your normal password.

Also dont make your 5 passwords some long unfamilar thing which is hard to remember. Let it be somthing personal that you can easily remember. For example if you have trouble remembering a password like "2466835831" then choose somthing else such as a word or better yet a phrase. "theworldgoesaround" is an example of a phrase. Now in order to make your password harder to figure out take out some of the letters in your password and replace them with numbers i.e "th3w0r1dg03sar0und" the "o"s are replaced with zeros and the "e"s are replaced with threes the "L" is also replaced with a one.

In the end folks remember that only you are able to prevent your own identity theft. Some common sense techniques go a long way to help protect your information.

The Official tech support post

2011-08-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

This post will remain on top all other new posts will be immediately after this one

You asked for it folks and now here it is. Let me start off by reiterating that I am a professional IT and tech repair guy since 1999 I have done both house calls for residential as well as small and large business IT infrastructure settings.Apart from that I have done several remote desktop connection troubleshooting and or repair. And that's what this thread is for. Through the magic of the Internet I can help resolve your computer woes from a world away!

Here are my rates. I normally charge $25 an hour for tech work but for you my loving loyal fans I will charge $5 dollars to connect to your computer and diagnose whats wrong. And then and additional $5 dollars to fix the problem. So a total of $10 dollars for solving your computer problems! No matter how long it takes I will not charge by the hour. $10 dollar flat rate for fixing a problem. And if I can not fix the problem then you are only charged $5 dollars for the diagnosis!

All payments are only accepted through paypal.

If you want my services then simply make a comment in this post and I will contact you through bloggers private message!

Remote Desktop Connection

2011-08-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

Alright so my poll so far shows that you are interested in more information about this little service

Basically a remote desktop connection allows one person using one computer to connect to another computer and see the desktop and control things or take over the other computer! So in effect if I were to establish a remote desktop connection with one of your computers I would in effect making your computer my own temporarily. I would see everything on your computer as if it were mine, and be able to use the mouse cursor too.

Sounds scary huh? =P

Well let me set aside your fears by clarifying a few things. First there are TWO types of remote desktop connection. The good kind and the bad kind. The bad creates a remote desktop connection to your computer with out you knowing about it or without your permission. Hackers do that from time to time.
The GOOD kind on the other hand is widely used by tech and IT guys like myself to diagnose and trouble shoot and make general repairs to peoples computers. The very first remote desktop connection program I ever used was called net-meeting and was designed for making business presentations easier to be shared and stuff. It was awesome had so much fun with my friends on that thing. These days remote desktop connection programs are every where. Even Microsoft makes it a standard feature in their modern day operating systems. To better help you and me work through some problems or what not. Important to note about the good kind of remote desktop connection programs is that they can not work with out YOUR consent. Meaning you have full control of how much a person is allowed to see of your computer and or control. If you want a person to see your desktop/computer only and not be able to control the mouse then you have the power to do that.

So in short I use a remote desktop connection program called VNC (you can look it up in yahoo search or something). i use the program to connect to your computer and help you solve whatever computer problem you may be experincing!

On other thing remote desktop connection programs are only good for solving software or operating system based computer problems NOT hardware unless it has to do with a hardware driver that's messing up. So if you have a broken fan in your tower...I wont be able to help with that =P

I hope that answers some of your questions about the RDC program and how it works and what its purpose is. If you still have any further questions please feel free to comment.

And finally my question is would any of you be interested in me doing that for you and you paying me like 5-10 bucks to diagnose and attempt to repair some of your computer woes through RDC! =D

My computer keeps spontaneously slowing down!

2011-08-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

If you find yourself saying the statement above then this post is for you.

It came to my attention recently that many people have random computer slowness lasting lets say from a few seconds to an hour or what have you. The issue with these folks isnt that the computer gets bogged down doing some task or program that was expected of it. No the issue is at seemingly random times without any prompting, the compuer just starts slowing down maybe even horrifically so.

One thing that should be understood, and as I have stated in previous posts, Your computer does alot of things wether you are aware of it or not. You dont have to be running a program or even at your computer for it to be doing its own thing. As long as the power is on, your computer will be doing many many behind the scenes tasks...

Now in order to get random slowness what has to happen is one or more of those behind the scenes tasks has to get bogged down in operation. And the good news is its relativley easy to figure out whats going on and who the "trouble maker" is =P

If you are running windows (which you should be) you simply press the crtl + alt + delete keys to bring up your task manager. If you are running windows vista or higher when you press crtl + alt + del you should then select "start task manager" Once the task manager is up you will see a number of tabs at the top and various other buttons and lookie-loos =P Below is a picture of a windows xp task manager.

There are 2 tabs to worry about when trying to locate the source of computer slowness, The first is the "Applications" tab which show a list of programs that you have started up manually for example FireFox or Internet Explorer or Microsoft Word or whatever. The only programs that should be in that list should be the ones that you have started up yourself, anything else is a problem. For example lets say you start up Internet explorer and when you are done with it you close it down but it doesnt close down all the way or some kind of error occurs. Internet Explorer at this point may still be inside the Applications tab list. In order to get rid of it you can click on it in the list then click the button that says "End Now" You will eventually be promoted to end the program now or wait till it closes by itself, that desicion is yours but I ussually say close now.

The second tab you need to know about is "Processes" tab. Below is an example

This tab is important because it will show you the problem at hand. There are 3 columns inside this tab The First one to the far left is the name of the program running in the background. The second row with numbers shows how much cpu or processing power that program is using. It is measured in percentages 100% being max processing power. Any one program that shows anything close to 100% lets say 70-90% is going to slow your computer down so much you could do a better job calculating with an abbacuss. Please note that the system idle process will ussually have a 98-99% processing rate (that is normal). It bassically shows you how much percentage is available currently or how much is left. Now if the freuqnecy of occurance of your random slowness is alot then you can keep an eye on those programs running in you processes tab and see if the numbers in the second column jump or spike to a high percentange. If it does then congratulations you have just discovered the cause of your slowness! The third column of numbers shows the amount of memory that paticular process is using. This could also be a cause for computer slowness if it isnt CPU usage/processing power then its most likely going to be the memory. Now I cant tell you how much is too much because every computer is different. You will need to know how much you have total to begin with then compare that number to the number that shows how much an indiviual process is using. With windows xp process memory is measured with a k next to it or kilobytes. 1000 k or kilobytes = 1mb or 1 megabytes or 1 million bytes. Most modern computers have a total amount of memory measured in gigabytes or billions of bytes. Now in the image above you will notice that the process called iexplorer.exe is using over 60,000k of memory. That translates to over 60mb. My computer has a total of 1.5gigabytes of memory so that means I have plenty of memory remaining.

Now that all of that has been addressed now its time to talk about the typical causes for random slowness.

In my experince most cases of abnormal slowness are due to one of two things. Anti-virus programs and or operating system automatic updates!

In the case of an Anti-Virus, every time it automaticaly downloads and installs updates it will slow your computer down some. Or every time it does an automatic system scan it will slow your computer down too.
If you find this to be too unbearable then the fix is as easy as configuring the anti virus to only allow manual download of updates and only manual activation of computer scans. These settings will not affect your anti-virus programs automatic virus detection should a virus try to get in so dont worry.

As for the case of windows automatic updates simply configure them so that it doesnt not check for automatic updates at all.

Taking requests

2011-08-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

Alright folks the window of opritunity is now closed! I am no longer taking requests so please do not post them!

If ya missed your chance to ask a tech question fear not! I will be periodically creating new request taking blogs from time to time!

Thanks to all who submitted an inquery.

Establish connection with a second computer

2011-07-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

Hey folks its me back at it again!

Today's topic focuses on making a network link between two computers using various methods.

Important to note that this article is primarily for windows xp users. Oh and a side note the more modern your OS (operating system) is the easier it is to make a network connection. For example with windows 98 before you could make a connection using a network cable you had to make sure the correct protocols were installed on both machines before they could talk to each other and it was just a mess. Nowadays with vista and windows 7, you basically just plug your chord into your computers and are good to go.

The first method for making a connection we will discuss is via Ethernet cord plugged into the Ethernet port on your computers if your computer is running windows xp then you most likely have this port and it looks like a bigger version of a female end of a telephone connector. So slap that bad boy into your computers (probably located at the back of your computers) and prepare for the next step. Now as i mentioned before about network protocols and stuff, windows xp should automatically take care of that stuff by itself which makes life alot easier. All you have to do is make sure that your drives are shared on both computers and then map a network drive.

WHOA WHOA what ya say?! Haha don't worry about that fancy terminology, I will walk you through it!
After plugging your cable into your computers, click on the "my computer" icon either on your desktop or you can find it by clicking on the start button. Once inside "my computer" find the icon labeled "local disk C:" (if its not called C then just find local disk). Now you want to right click on that icon and then click on "sharing and security" what comes will talk about understanding the risk of sharing the root drive blah blah. just click on that that text. Now you will see a couple of different things the first is "local sharing and security" and the second is "network sharing and security" you want the second one. Now inside that second topic is a check box which says "share this folder on the network" check it. When you do some more options will become available to you such as "share name" and then a letter next to that. Check the box that also says "Allow network users to change my files" (otherwise you can see files on the other computer but cant change them) then click on the ok button. The computer will then start the sharing process and when all is said and done you will see a little hand under neath your local disk icon. Make sure you do this to both computers if you want to share files from both computers.

When you're done with that in the same window that you see your local disk with the hand under it, you should see at the top a button called "tools" click on that then click on "map network drive" Don't mess with the Drive letter option that comes up just leave that default (most likely "z") now in the folder box type in \\computername\local disk letter. Alright first things first you need to find out the name of the computer you want to connect to in order to do that go to the computer you want to connect to and right click on the "my computer" icon then select properties then click on the tab at the top called "computer name" the name of the computer is the "full computer name" write that down or memorize it or whatever and put it into the folder box on your other computer. So for example it might look like this \\jjish-13 keep in mind all computer names are unique. next step is put in your drive letter. the drive letter is the letter that's next to "local disk" on your other computer (its usually c) so then your finished work looks something like this \\name\c and that's it for that. Next step is to hit the finish button and when you do the computer will try to connect to the other computer and if it is successful a window will come up with a bunch of different folders in it from the other computer and you're done. Now you may need to enter a username and password to before it will allow you to connect successfully. All you do is click on the "connect using a different username" which will then give you the option of typing in the user name and password of the other computer your trying to connect to. If you are unsure what the user name is you can go to the other computer and click on the start button and then the second button up from the bottom will say "log off" and then the username.

That pretty much takes care of connecting your computer through an Ethernet cable using the map network drive method.

Now I should say that alot of modern routers these days make network connections between computers very easy as well... if all your computer are connected to the same router using either a cable or wirelessly then AS LONG AS THE LOCAL DISK DRIVES ARE SHARED they should all be automatically connected to each other and allow you to change or transfer files. So really if you are using a router you just follow the steps mentioned above to turn on sharing and then once that's established and you see the little hand under your drive icon you go to your desktop and double click the "My network places" icon (or you can find it by clicking on the start button) and then after a moment or two the icon displaying the local disk of your other computer should come up and all you have to do is click on it!

Internet Speed

2011-07-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

let me start off by saying this will be my last blog for about a week or so since i will be out of town(maybe)

OK so Internet speeds come in all shapes and sizes sorta speak and your speed is proportional number one to how much your paying per month for it =P

alright alright your ISP also known as your Internet service provider is who you pay every month to have your Internet brought to you and they can charge you whatever they want for that service too. Now there are two important things to note when dealing with Internet speed and that is your "download" speed and your "upload speed" typically most people measure Internet speed in terms of download only and the fast download speed that is currently broadly available (not including T-lines) is about 24 megabytes per second. and the fastest upload speed is about 2 megabytes per second.

the difference in upload speed verse download speed is thus: download speed deals with how fast you can view an image on a website or how fast a website loads up when you go to it and things like that, how fast you can download a song, basically how fast another computer can give information to your computer. Upload speed is in a nut shell how fast your computer can send information to another computer. Now for most people download speed is the primary concern. However if you own a server like myself then you need to pay attention to upload speed because that's the one that will determine how fast some one can go to a website that's hosted off your computer or if you have a game server it determines how fast players can access data from your server.

if you are curious about how fast your Internet currently is then please feel free to visit http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest
choose a location closest to you and then begin the test. the first test preformed will measure your download speed. and it is measured in kilobytes rather than megabytes. Just know that 1000 KB(kilobytes) = 1 Megabyte. The second test preformed measures your upload speed!

When is it time to upgrade?!

2011-07-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

I get this question from time to time and the answer is pretty straight forward. If you can still manage to do everything you want to do on your computer with out moderate hassle then you don't need to upgrade!! Even if your computer is 10 years old you don't need to upgrade. Just remember the old adage, "if its not broke, don't fix it". Or in this case if you can operate on your computer just fine to get your tasks done then don't be pressured to buy the latest and greatest technology out there.

That being said, some times it is time to upgrade =P Getting a new computer that's right for you is another one of those things which i cant help you out with unless I know what you use your computer for to begin with. For example lets say you spend most of your time on the computer browsing websites and checking e-mail, you arn't going to want to spend money on a computer that's built for gaming and comes complete with a high-end 3d video graphics card.

If you really need to upgrade then make sure you speak to a qualified customer service rep at whatever store you are planning to buy a computer and make sure he knows what you use your computer for, and make REALLY sure that the computer he suggests for you can do everything you need.

That's it for now!

Normal processes for windows xp

2011-07-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while but I got a little busy.

Nothing annoys me more than for a computer to be doing something it has no business doing in the first place.

What you should know is that even if you don't use your computer or tell it to do something, your computer as long as its on is always doing something behind the scenes. Your computer likes to think....ALOT. Whenever you hear those click click sounds going at a fast rate in your computer its because its busy thinking or doing something. That's fine, I don't care about that. What I care about is it doing something useless or thinking about something completely pointless. And what I mean by that is alot of times the programs that are installed onto your computer require your computers attention even when you are not running those programs. These are known as the system processes in windows xp. Now in order to view your system processes in windows xp all you have to do is press and hold the crtl button the alt button and the del or delete button at the same time. What comes up is a little window called your task manager. Now in that window your gunna see a few tabs at the top labeled different things like "applications", "processes", "performance", "networking", and "users". Click on the tab labeled processes to see everything your computer is doing in the background. You should see a pretty decent sized list. Some of that stuff in the list is important for your computer to keep functioning right and some of it is just a waste of your computers time and energy. Figuring out whats needed and whats not is a hard task and I dare not attempt to walk you through it in this blog. Each computers processes tend to be unique from one another so with out actually seeing the list myself I cant tell you what needs to be done. Instead what I can do is give you a list of basic windows xp processes that are required to keep the computer functioning. And then from this list you can compare it to what processes you have running and get an idea of the situation. So here's the list, I will also post a picture for you to see.

in no particular order:
SVCHOST.EXE (about 9 of these may be running in your list)
EXPLORER.EXE (this is what enables you to see your desktop and click on icons)
alg.exe (i forget if this one is a core system process or not lol it may have to do with a video driver
if you dont have it dont worry about it)
LSASS.EXE
SERVICES.EXE
WINLOGON.EXE (if you dont have this one dont worry)
CSRSS.EXE
SMSS.EXE
System
System Idle Process

I black out my other processes so you can just see a list of the basic ones

That's about it for the core system processes windows xp needs in order to stay functioning.
Keep in mind something else, those are just so windows can stay on and you can use your computer like normal. It has nothing to do with your ability to connect to the Internet wirelessly or run any other programs. Some programs do need a background system process to be running on your computer all the time or they just wont work. My advice to you is unless your experienced enough to be fooling around and shutting processes off, just don't do it. Finding out which process belongs to which program and then determining if its necessary or not is an extremely time consuming thing. I recently spent about 3 hours hunting down every process by hand and looking it up on the Internet to see what program it belonged to, for a customer of mines computer. For me its important to shut down irrelevant processes because they just sit there draining my computers overall power and speed!

By the way if you are familiar enough with your own system processes, then looking at your processes list can give you a hint as to whether or not you are infected with a virus....

What kind of anti virus is right for me?

2011-07-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

Thats a fair question.

One thing that should be understood before one goes and spends money on an anti virus/malware program is that there is no such thing as a perfect anti virus program. No I am serious. The way it works with anti virus programs is to do there best to stay on top of new viruses which are created daily (like hundreds of new viruses are released everyday) and the truth of it is no body is perfect and no program is perfect either. There is not one anti virus program out there that will catch EVERY virus EVERY time, its just not possible.

SO with that in persective the goal then is to find an anti virus program whichs blocks/stops more viruses than most! Now through out the years ive worked with many different types of anti virus programs. Such as Mcafee, Norton/Symantec, Trend Micro, Avast, and a few others including Spyware Doctor with anti-virus.

Idealy it would be nice to run more than one anti virus program at a time. that way if one program misses a virus, the other migth catch it and vice versa. But this however proves a little impractical as anti virus programs themselves take up a huge amount of system resources(system rescources are what your computer uses to function, its like computing power and it is measured in how much information your computer can process at once and how much it can think and stuff like that in laymens terms) and running an anti virus program requires your computer to think and process alot! so running two programs at a time is just not practical for most people unless you have a scathingly massive amount of system rescrouces =P

Now then out of all the anti virus programs i have worked with i recommend Spyware Doctor with anti-virus.
http://www.pctools.com/ Why? Well the main reason is that it has caught viruses that other programs could not even detect and that was 5-6 years ago. Thier techonology has come a long way and includes heuristic(heuristics is kind of like using intuition) approaches to solving a great deal of malware related stuff. Spyware-Doctor with anti-virus comes with an all inclusive package that handles browser defending(Internet Explorer only I beleive), inteligent protection of core system files, regular updates of course, and programming so smart that it can even block suspiscious activity even if it doesnt know what it is!(Alot of anti virus programs need to be told about the virus through an update before it knows to block it). Well it does a ton of things really. But not to discredit any other anti virus programs out there, I have only used spyware docotor with anti virus for many years now and the techonlogy of other anti virus programs would have certinly improved as well...

If you're like me then you dont like having your system resources used up all the time and you disable your anti-virus program and prevent it from running(bad idea i know...) and because of that I have regreted it more than once. But if you are hurting for system resrouces already and cant afford to run an anti virus program then there is hope for you! There is a program called "Housecall" which is created by Trend Micro and its a free browser based anti virus program which uses javascript to scan your computer and remove virus infections! What does all that mean!? It means that if you think you are infected with a virus or if you want to scan a file or program before running it or opening it, all you have to do is go to this website housecall.trendmicro.com and follow the step by step instructions to run thier program! Once again its free of charge and pretty darn effective. I use it from time to time when im bout to run a suspiscious looking file i just downloaded and that way I dont need to fire up my spyware docotor anti virus program all the time. Of course it only works if you can infact get on the internet and go to thier website. If you are infected with a virus then its possible thatthe virus would prevent you from visiting certain websites.

Well thats it for now folks I think I've covered everything needs be said.

Why does my comptuer beep ABNORMALLY when I start it up?

2011-06-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

Hahaha well for one thing its normal for a computer to give a beep or two when starting itself up. That's like the beep of safety its the computers way of letting you know its good to go. BUT lets say one day your computer decides to beep a little differently or maybe even sound like its going to have a heart attack! What do ya do then?

BEEP CODES are the computers way are telling you whats wrong with it! carefully listen to the beeps and you will hear a series of beeps maybe a few long beeps and or short beeps and then it starts its beeping cycle over again...Basically each beep code represents a different problem the computer is having with one of its pieces of hardware.

I remember one day when my computer started beeping 8 short beeps in a row and freaked me out. Come to find out the computer was trying to tell me that my video card had come a little loose and was not in its proper place! So i popped it back in and problem solved...

Now your computer has TONS of hardware in it and the computer also has a beep code for most of those hardware pieces should something be wrong with it. I could tell you what the different beeps represent specifically however it really depends on the type of BIOS you have. A BIOS is like a mini "operating system" which you can access before windows launches for example. There are many different BIOS manufacturers and each one has built into the computer a different set of beep codes.
My advice to you is to find out what manufacturer and version your BIOS is and then type that into the Internet along with the words "beep code" and see what comes up. Finding out your BIOS brand is easy...You should see it the moment you first turn the power onto your computer. It might say "award bios" for example or IBM or phoenix etc. Should you nothing come up on your screen at all then what I suggest you do is to shut down your computer, touch the metal case(tower) of your computer for a moment and then unplug it from the wall... Then open up your tower(case) and look inside on the biggest circuit board you can find this is called the "mother board" and everything is basically plugged into it. Look around on there and try to find a manufacturer name. Once you got that type into the Internet "manufacturer name motherboard bios".

In closing your computer will usually give you a friendly beep or two on start up and anything more than that means its telling you something is wrong!

Viruses

2011-06-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

Now this blog would be HUGE if I indeed posted everything that could be posted so instead I'll just talk about a little bit today and create a new post for the rest at a later date!

SOOO =P

A virus is a program or code which makes your computer do something bad. That is something which hurts your computer that you don't want or that hurts some one Else's computer ect. Alot of times you can get viruses from websites that are less than reputable or from well known sites which have ads that contain malware code on them (Malware is just another name for bad code or programs) Malware includes things like spyware and viruses and trojans and stuff...

Now this post focuses on some quick actions to take should you suspect a virus is attacking your pc. HOPEFULLY you have some sort of anti virus running on your machine. But even still a virus can some times KILL your anti virus program... nothing is full proof and so that might be the case. If you find yourself browsing a website and your computer starts freaking out or things start shutting down and restarting, that is a tell tale tail sign of a virus or malware... During this time of the viruses initial attack, timing is vital and a quick response may save your computer. If you are not sure of whats going on or what to do but you suspect virus activity the best thing for you is to shut your computer down MANUALLY... that is you HOLD THE POWER BUTTON IN UNTIL THE COMPUTER SHUTS DOWN and you can no longer hear the fans spinning or the computer making noise... One thing is for sure if a virus is attempting to break into your computer, it cant do it if the computer is off =P Please note turning off the computer by holding the power button on your tower will take a few seconds to actually turn it off.

Where you go from here is tricky... one thing to keep in mind if you suspect a virus has taken over is that at any time the computer is on the virus is probably working.... so try to keep the computer off as much as possible and only turn it on to attempt to fix it. You may wish to restart your computer under safemode (windows operating systems only) safemode is a special way to start your computer which tells it to only start up the most basic programs your computer needs to function. Safemode can often times inhibit a viruses ability to function as well, although there is no guarantee of that. To start your computer in safemode, simply turn the power back on and continually press the "f8" key on your keyboard... NOT the "f" and the "8" keys, but the key that has both the letter "f" and "8" on it....Usually found at the top of the keyboard... after a while of pressing this key repeatedly you will see a black screen with white letters talking about how you would like to start up the windows operating system... Use the arrows on your keyboard to scroll to safemode and press enter. You may then be asked to choose which operating system you wish to start in safemode (most likely only one option in the list.. so select that and press enter). you will then see a list of files fly by pretty fast on the screen and then eventually windows with safemode will come up... You will be prompted to continue running in safemode or to attempt to preform a system restore... The one you want is continue running in safemode.

Safemode is a way to work on your computer relatively safe from risk of further infection. What you do after you are in safemode is entirely up to you. But if you have an anti virus program running you may want to preform a scan (most anti virus programs don't like scanning in safemode, but you don't exactly have a choice at this point....)

one other thing If you are familiar already with system restore, you may be tempted to try that from safemode. This is a realistic possibility but i warn you that alot of viruses attempt to infect system restore files as well. So there is a chance that when you preform a restoration you will restore the virus as well....

Regular Hardware Maintenance

2011-06-23T23:34:00.000-07:00

Here we go folks! this post is about that thing we should do often but usually fail to do, ultimately resulting in the system failure of our machines!

Now what exactly is involved in regular hardware maintenance you ask? HO HO HO glad you asked...

The particulars of the routine are more or less the same no matter what kind of computer you have so I have compiled a short and ordered list that you may follow to spruce things up a bit!

1. Turn off your computer

2. Flip the switch in the back of your computer on the power supply to turn off ALL power to the computer
Or simply unplug it from the wall and wait about 30 seconds(for full power supply capacitor discharge).

3.Open up your computer tower(case) and set it aside.

4. Get some tissues and or Q-Tips.

5. Remove all card pieces. Such as video graphics cards or sound cards or memory cards. Handle them carefully and set them aside on a wood table or something. (Note if you are not comfortable handling your computers removable "plug and play" pieces then you can skip this step and move on).

6. Now this is where the cleaning begins... Chances are if you haven't cleaned your system in a while its going to be FULL of dust. Dust can cause functional problems some times so its best to get rid of it. All of it every where you can find/reach. Likewise do the same for your removed card devices if you did that step.

7. You wont be able to remove every spec of dust in your system so don't worry about that. Mainly the places you want to focus on are the parts known as "heat sinks" these are the big "grooved" metal pieces that are on top of vital circuits to keep them cool. They are also usually underneath some sort of fan. If you have finesse then you may attempt to remove the fan from the heat-sink to better clean it. But if you cant remove the fan then simply do the best you can.

8. Speaking of fans...Clean them. fans hate dust inside of them and on their blades so get it with the tissue or Q-tip.

9. Take a air compressor to it! Haha if you have one then it can be ideal simply to blow the whole thing out with an air compressor however not every one has access to one... You may be asking yourself why this is step 9 and not for instance 3 or so...And that's because if your computer is chalked FULL of dust n grime...you don't want to blow it up all over the place... get some of the major areas first with a tissue or what you will then finish the job with an air compressor. That's what I recommend... But of course for those of you who like dirt all over the place then go ahead and have at...

10. You're done make sure to put all of your removable pieces back together as carefully as possible. Any cards that are not put back precisely and securely as they were before will freak your computer out and may cause it to start beeping when it starts up. If it does then open it up again and try making your pieces more secure. Place your tower cover back on your computer and make sure you flip the switch on the back of the computer power supply back on =P Then you can turn it on again!

OTHER IMPORTANT NOTES...
It is a wise practice before you work on a computers inner parts, to ground yourself out... and all that means is while the computer is plugged into the wall, touch the metal part of your computer case for a moment or too to get rid of any static electricity you may have on you.
Also don't worry about the air compressor (should you decide to use one), damaging any electrical components, it wont.
Do not, I repeat do not use any type of chemical cleaner! NONE whatsoever. Only remove the dust with tissue and Q-tip and make sure there are no pieces of it left.

My first blog... EVER

2011-06-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

Alright I'd like to start things off by saying that the purpose of these blogs is for the "do-it-yourselfer" type of folks who prefer looking up relative information on their own and getting the job done. I'd also like to note that these blogs will contain a series of computer related issues and problems for which an easy do-it-yourself solution will be presented with the least amount of technical terms and jargon as possible hehe.

I have over 10 years experience in the field of computer teching and have experience with operating systems dating back to windows 95.

Well let's get down to the brass tacks of it then...

If you're some what of a computer gamer like myself, or have a system that runs alot of 3d applications. You may find that your video card (be it top of the line or other) just cant cut the mustard and burns out. Yes I did say BURNS OUT. That's right folks for some reason or another video cards can overheat and die! Some tail tale tell signs that this is happening might be frequent freezes or crashes during 3d rendering. A simple fix might be to just try updating the video card drivers from the manufacturers website. Updated drivers are certainly a nice thing to have. but more often than not upping the driver alone isn't gonna fix your stuff. One easy thing to try is to open up your tower(That's the computers case) and expose all the little circuits inside. Once you've got that then you're going to take a house fan, you know one of those medium sized fans you plug into the wall usually comes with 3 speed settings, and you're going to put that directly in front of the opening of your computer tower and angle the thing so it faces down into it.

And that's it! Turn on the juice to the fan and your all set! In my experience a good house fan blowing air down on the internal workings of the computer is a good way of keeping overheating video cards temperatures down! Another thing you might wanna do is keep track of your air temperature by getting yourself one of those cheap little thermometers and placing it some where in the tower(away from most of the components) OR if you have a top air vent on your tower you can place it next to that... The idea is to place the thermometer some where where it can get a good sense of what the temp is inside your computer...In my experience also computers generally don't like the temp to be above 80 some odd degrees (varies by location).

So with a thermometer and a 3 speed fan you can up your fan speed as you notice the temperature increase!
For me that would be keeping the fan blowing on the thing at level 1 up until about 75 degrees then I kick it up a notch to speed 2...Anything over say... 78 I put it on the 3rd and highest setting.

Its the simple solutions to big problems that can be the most rewarding some times!

Stay tuned for my next blog