Installation of a new device

The very first thing, try to maintain your composure and not to toss the system out of the window but read the message and instructions carefully. This message is supposed to tell you the file which caused this error and will tell you to take some guided action.

Most often, BSoD occurs anytime you install a new device and then try to run the system. In such case, simply take the device out of the system and reboot. See if the problem is gone or still persist. If the Windows loads fine, immediately head over to the official website of the device manufacturer. Any newly device with such disaster is unacceptable and the manufacturer should have caught this issue before releasing it in the market. Then again, it is technical stuff, you never know when something goes wrong even though it was tested well or sometimes a faulty stuff come out after the device has been released. In such case, the manufacturer either release an update or will simply replace your device with a replacement device.

A black screen

Note, there is also another kind of of erroneous display, now this will be a black screen. This generally is caused by a faulty video driver. Good thing is you will get some message and probably direction as well that what you can do from that point.

System freezing

There is another sign you may have is, the system freeze ups when on the Windows logo and never make it past that point. You again wanna try the advanced startup options. Device drivers can mess with linux systems too. In linux, this called Kernel panic. The fix for this problem in Linux is the same as Windows and look for solution on the manufacturer’s website. You will most likely to find an update which contains the code that directly gets installed into the kernel of the operating system. These updates for drivers are typically called the kernel modules.

Hardware issues

Any faulty hardware can create a kernel panic in both macOS and Linux and totally ruin the system from operating smoothly. Typically, a kernel panic in a macOS often comes on with a black and gray-ish screen of death and something you do not wanna face. Technically, this screen in terms of macOS is called Spinning Wheel of Death /SPoD. The fix is the same as linux and Windows mentioned above but the good thing is for macOS, this is not as terrible as a BSoD.

Keeping these in mind in such disastrous time, can save you some time and money.

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Booting the operation system with a flash drive

Linux provides you with two most common boot managers such GRUB and LILO. GRUB is widely used in modern times since LILO is quite old comparing to this fast paced technological world now and provides no support for any UEFI BIOS system.

One of the most common Linux “My PC won’t boot up” is due to something happened to the GRUB. Most probably the GRUB is corrupted. As for the older Linux systems with LILO you would get a message like “Mission LILO”.

Don’t worry and know that the solution is always there. Some you will like, some you won’t. You have couple of ways you can fix or recover from this issue. If your system is a GRUB2 based systems, you need to boot the operating system media disc or flash-drive and install it in the memory. Yet, watch out, you are not supposed to install on the hard drive. Thereafter, you will have access to  he terminal and then run sudo grub-install command as well as the location of the boot drive, DVD/Flash-drive, and repair the issue.

Operating system failing to start normally

Any computer does not just start straight off to your operating system. There is a whole bunch of process gets started before you can even see anything on the screen. Typically this is called the POST period. POST stands for Power On Self Test. This is necessary since the system perform some of the most crucial test before it hand over the startup to the operating system.

If your system gets past the POST period and you see the Windows logo on the display, all is good and you make it to the desktop, you feel relaxed only to find out your PC is struck with a wide blue screen with some message and code and instructions. There you go! You just faced teh BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) or your system hands on load. These typically happen due to some error prone device drivers or something bad happened to the Registry. Sometime the programmes that auto loads can cause system to hang on startup as well. All of these scenario may occur, you should immediately head to the Advanced startup Options, so that you can make it to the desktop.

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Opening an LCD monitor

Be very careful if you plan to open up the LCD for some reason. You may find the inverter quite shocking.

For, First, it is powered by intense high-voltage electrical circuit that may show you why it is so shocking. These inverters sometimes tend to hold the electrical charge for few minutes from the time you unplug the monitor.

So, in such case of opening up a monitor, make sure to wait a few minutes at least 10 minutes before you open it up. Second, inverters can get super hot and can give you burning, true, sensation. These are serious threat. Always wait a few minutes after you plug out the monitor and then dive in. Also, not only you will find the inverter shocking but inverter itself find you quite shocking since you may damage the inverter, if you find the inverter shocking.

To conclude this, you can find there are companies who sell replacement parts for LCDs but repairing an LCD is quite difficult. There are people who will do it for you faster and quite cheaper than you can. In such case you need to search for companies who has people who specializes in LCD technology. There are plenty of such companies out their all over the world.

Dealing with High-Resolution Monitors

High-resolution monitors offer one of the finest visuals you can get in the market. But they can make various screen elements such as buttons, menus and other stuff for navigating operating systems and applications too small for some viewers. Note that LCD monitors have a native resolution and if you go above or below the native resolution, the picture will degrade. Unfortunately, most people do that because it makes their screen looks bigger as well as the elements. That is nowhere near the solution.

The best and proper way to deal with such requires adjustments via the display settings or display applet (Win 8/8.1). Each and every version of Windows allows to make adjustments of the elements size directly from the operating system services, which makes the screen element go bigger. The resolution does not change but the size of the elements change. Go to display settings or display applet. There you will find a drop down menu under ‘Make everything bigger’ section under display in Windows 10. Typically this setting is set to 100% (recommended) but feel free to adjust them that fits your need.

Cleaning monitors

As for keeping your monitor clean, always use an antistatic monitor wipes or at least a general antistatic cloth. Microfiber cloth works fantastic in this case. Some of the LCD monitors may require special cleaning equipment. Never ever use window cleaners that contains ammonia or any liquid because if the liquid gets into the LCD, you will have another shocking experience! Lot of commercial cleaning solutions also melts older LCD screens. Watch out!

All of these discussed here might give you some good heads up. As you can see there will be times when your newly purchased monitor will start to act strange. In such cases, now you know the things you can do by yourself without really getting your wallet out for calling in a tech. Also, your monitor needs cleaning and maintenance as well. Apply what is shared here and you should be good. Any case, none of these works out for you, simply call in or see a professional tech.

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But here we will look at the common monitor issues and to address them in three separate concerns. Such as – common monitor problems, external adjustments and internal adjustments.

Common Monitor Problems

Getting into the dissection of a monitor can be so uncomforting, but you can fix substantial part of a monitor problem all by yourself. The followings are some of the most common monitor problems you can address based on their respective symptoms.

If one of the colour is missing, check the cables for any breaks or bent pins. Check the front controls for that colour as well. If the colour adjustment is already at the max the monitor may require internal service.

For problems such as ghosting, fuzzy vertical edges, streaking, check the cable connections and examine the cable itself. These problem typically rarely indicated to the monitor but the video card.

As monitors age, they generally lose brightness. If the brightness control is turned all the way to the up and the images still seem dimmed, the monitor requires internal adjustment. This is also a good time to use the power switch or the management options come in with all version of Windows, to turn off the monitor after a certain period of time.

Bad pixels

LCD monitors may have bad pixel. Bad pixel is any pixel that does not act the way it supposed to act. Perhaps it never lights up, which is addressed as a dead pixel. A pixel which is always stuck on pure white is called a lit pixel. A pixel always stuck on a specific colour is a stuck pixel.

In case there is a bad pixel and the monitor is still under warranty, it is best to directly contact the manufacturer. In case it is not under warranty, you can try to revive the pixel using techniques found online, learn to live with the bad pixel or replace the monitor. Almost every LCD panel makers allow a certain number of bad pixels, even on new monitors. You need to check the warranty for the monitor and see how many they allow before you may return the monitor.

Note that if an LCD monitor cracks, it is no way repairable and need replacement.

Problems with images

A flickering image with LCD generally indicates either a very inexpensive panel with a way too much backlight or a dying CCFL backlight. LEDs do not flicker so you do not see these issues with such them. In this case, you need to replace the backlight if necessary or simply replace the monitor with a modern one.

If an image is dimmed, in any part of the screen indicates a dead or dying backlight.

If the image leaves an afterimage, meaning the frame of picture is updated to the new one but the previous image trace is still somewhat there until it fades away. This is called image persistence. Most persistence problems these days are quite temporary and goes way when you turn the display off. If it does not, you may have permanent burn-in.

Early generation monitors struggled with burn-in, a new solution came in response to address this issue. Which is configure your operating system in a way that turns off the idle display or protect them with an animated screen saver.

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This is almost the regular command prompt except for the fact you get access to this command prompt you will have access to an extra feature like bootrec. But, this command prompt do not have lot of regular command you find in the regular command prompt. So what is so special about the bootrec?

Commands run with startup repair

Generally these important commands are run with startup repair, use it only if any other options fail. So, the following commands are you want to work with from within the WinRE command prompt.

• bootrec /fixboot – This command rebuild the boot sector for the system partition which is active.
• bootrec /fixmbr – This one rebuilds the master boot record for your system partition.
• bootrec /scanos – With this it will look for the Windows installations not currently in the BCD store and come back with a report.
• bootrec /rebuildmbr – What differs from the last one is, this one also look for the Windows installations that is not present in the BCD store and gives you a choice if you want it to add them to BCD store.

BCD

BCD store is Boot Configuration Data files which contains all the necessary information about your operating system installed on your system. You also have another handy command like bcdedit. Bcdedit alone without switches added to it shows you just the boot options.

bcdedit /export <filename> – this exports a copy of the BCD store to a file. This is one of the best move you can make during the use of a bcdedit.

Bcdedit /import <filename> – this imports the copy of the BCD store back into the store.

As you just saw that bcdedit alone does not do much. With the switches you can opt into its power. You can identify the identifier provided from the output of bcdedit. Then you can use that identifier to make any changes to your BCD store. You do that by using the /set switch. For instance, running a syntax like: BCDEDIT /SET {current} path \BackupWin\system32\winload.exe

Running this syntax will change the current path of the identifier to a different location you mention.

This command prompt also give you the diskpart command. With diskpart you have the ability to work with a full-fledged partitioning tool. Although, this is highly advised to proceed with caution since some of the safety feature is not found here, which the built int Disk management tool provide.

You can run commands on diskpart to perform operations like add, change, list, delete volumes and partitions and so on. You can also use the format command to format any volume. You can run the clean command if you are about to toss the drive out, this will wipe out all partition and volume information off the selected disk.

There are many other things you can do to repair your non-booting hassle the hoff system which simply needs more study and research. Feel free to get your hands dirty but be very careful and make sure you know what your are doing and the consequences.

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Things go wrong when the display begin to respond differently than expected. To fix a problem with the video, we need to divide the issue in two. We need to check video cards/drivers and Monitors.

Problems with a video card

As for the video cards, they rarely go bad unless you bought it second hand without giving much thought into it or most of the problems occur in video cards or drivers are due to bad or misconfiguration or incompatible driver. You always need to make sure that the correct driver is installed.

Also an incompatible driver likely to lead to a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) the moment you start the Windows. Typically your PC won’t act if a driver gone bad or corrupted until the next reboot of the system. If you boot up the system with corrupted driver, Windows will act as one of the following: either go into SVGA mode or blank out the monitor (nothing on the screen) or lock up, display weird nonsense patterns, distorted image and so on. In a nutshell, everything will appear as a pure indication of a mess.

In any such case, reboot into the safe mode and first things, roll back or delete the driver. Remember that advanced video cards have a tendency of showing their drivers as installed programmes which can be found under Programmes and features. So, it is a good move to start from there before deleting a driver using the device manager. Now download the latest driver and reinstall.

Physical damage

Every video cards are pretty durable but they have components that may go bad over time, such as are the fan and RAM. If any of these go bad, it shows the same kind of behaviour mentioned above. Also bad drivers tend to throw these sort of errors as well. In any such case, very first thing, boot up the system into the safe mode and see if the problem persists. If it does not, there no issue with the video card.

If you have recurring issues with video and you have done everything you knew typically fixes the issuse, it would be high time you need to see the logs in Windows Event Viewer and start reading the logs. In case if you are not familiar with Even Viewer have a look at how to use Event Viewer for troubleshooting your system or how to use even viewer in general.

Excessive heat inside the case even though the video card fan running at max, still can create some mess in the system. You system may unexpectedly shutdown due to the overheating. You will recognize the pattern as the system will come up again in a minute or two and then goes down again as you use it to the max and heat up again. Sometimes the screen will show bizarre stuff on the screen and distort the screen. In such scenario, must check your case fans and make sure you keep adequate space around the video card. Also make sure to take your system out once in a while to blow the dust from its filters, vents and fans.

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This article will teach you to maintain your operational system properly.

The difference between optimisation and maintenance

Running a computer requires more than just navigating our way through and knowing how to operate it. Each of these modern operating systems we use requires some occasional check-ups in order to function properly just like we take our vehicle or ourselves to the workshop or doctor. You do not need to know all of these if you are ready to spend good amount money and leave it to the staff of a computer shop, if not, read on and lets find out the necessary operation we can run from our home to keep our system good, up and running happily!

Very first thing let’s get these two terms clear, maintenance is some sort of task or operation you will be running from time to time and optimisation is something that is some adjustment you made to your system to run the system a way more efficiently than before.

Remember one thing that this is not it, even if you have a super high geared system running under full optimisation and you do maintain your system all so well, you will run into various of problems. But the catch is if you are not tech person and you do not have time for this, it is better to seek for professional help at that point and if you are a geeky or simply a tech person, carry on and let’s know one thing that all of these operating system developers left us some great tools we can use to find out the cause of any problems.

Tools for maintaining your operating system

When it comes down to maintaining operating systems, know that Windows operating system provides much more tools than Linux, UNIX or macOS. One of the core things to remember that all of these operating systems require some sort of patching, registries and temporary files should be cleaned often, all the mass storage device we have such hard drives, need proper organization and in good health etc.

So, let’s talk about Patch management. Every operating system when it first comes out, it is not fully bug-free, to say some hiccups and errors may come with it which is virtually impossible to know unless it is out on the market. So, when the operating system is out and used by many, the feedback that is gathered is heard and all the developers who are working on this operating system, are constantly working on it to make it bug-free and implementing new features that would optimise and fire up the operating system than before and things like that. One of the potential risk is that there are a lot of hackers or ill-intent people who can utilise the weaknesses in the system and exploit it to satisfy their malignant intentions.

To save us from such a hassle, operating system developers release software updates which is otherwise know as patch management or patches.

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NTFS disc partitioning

This whole process starts with the hard disks NTFS partition. Most of the new Windows should have NTFS partitions due to high performance and security mechanism. Note that every files and folders you have inside your system especially on an NTFS partition comes in with a list that has two layers of data. The first layer listed includes all the users and groups that has access to that files and folders. The second layer is the level of authorisation each of these groups and users have. This is where you set the level of access and things that each of these users can do or not via the NTFS permission.

NTFS permissions

NTFS permissions are one of the most powerful security mechanisms of the Windows environment. For instance, you can authorize a person to read and edit a document but you can restrict them from deleting the file. These are generally called read, write permission. You can do much more specific things for each user or group based on your need. This is highly configurable.

NTFS topic goes a way deeper and has a complex structure, which we do not need to go to, rather let’s know about the core concepts regarding NTFS which is good enough to lay an intermediate security foundation for your system.

The functions of NTFS security

NTFS has some basic level of permission you can work with such as the ones listed below with their description.

Ownership

This is a very powerful mechanism. The way it works is when you create any files or folders you by default become the owner of the document. You can do whatever you like with this document including restricting others from accessing your document. Even the administrator.

Take ownership permission

This is used to give permission to take over your document and they can do whatever they want with this document. One thing to note that, all the users under administrator accounts have the power to take ownership away from you but they only can access the file.

Change permission

Another significant role of this is that you can give or take away any permission for other accounts in the system.

Folder permission

Folder permission lets you to decide how far a user can do things with the folder. For instance, you can deny permission for users to the contents of the folder.

File permission

With this you are able to set what the user can do with such file. For instance, you can deny the user to ‘Read and Execute’ the file. They won’t be able to run that program ever.

The easiest and quickest way to get to such security tab is to right-click on any folder or files and select properties. From there select security tab. There you will see two boxes. The top one contains all the lists of users and groups that have access to that file or folder and the bottom one contains the kind of permission each of them have and the configuration you can make there.

You can configure the changes by clicking the edit button. Here you will be able to add or remove anyone. You can set the permission of each of them. Whatever you do, keep an extra eye on never delete or remove administrator account especially from the user and group panel. You can do so in the files and folder but not from the system.

Permissions in details

Let’s look at each of these permission in details.

Full control allows you to give full control over that file or folder, which they can do anything they want. Modifying lets you read, write and delete the files or folder. Read and Execute is the mode that allows you to open and execute or run a program in the system.

List folder contents lets you see the files and sub folders. Read is used for letting a person just open the file. Finally, Write is the mode that lets you only open and write in the file.

These types of permission are the same for a file other than file does not have any List folder contents.

General tips

Two major takeaways from this would be, remember that whoever from the listed users or groups creates a file or folder has complete ownership of that file or folder even if you have blocked some of the permission for them. Another major takeaway is to always know that administrator has the highest authority over all of the files and folders. Even if you have blocked the administrator from getting access to your files and folders, they can easily get access to them via Taking ownership.

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Managing users on Windows 7

This one is for Windows 7 fans. You want to go to control panel  and choose User Accounts going to Manage accounts from there.

At this point, you will be confident enough to poke around and know how to create new users on different version of Windows. You just need to know how to get there. With Windows 7, you do not need to right-click and select the drop down menu but you will see create new account button below the applet. With this, you will be prompted with a box, where your only options are to either get this person under standard user or Administrator. And of course, when you are done go ahead and click the create Account button.

Managing users on Windows 8/8.1

Now let’s take a look at how all of this works inside Windows 8/8.1.

This version of Windows works a little differently than the 7 of course. With Windows 8.1 Microsoft moved their primary focus of user accounts from local accounts straight to the Internet-wide Microsoft account.

Windows 8 has a different layer of settings called ‘Settings charm’. Right beneath the charm you will see an option called ‘change PC settings’. Select that, go to Accounts from the listed options on the left. One thing about Windows 8/8.1 is so annoying that you will not be able to work with this version unless you have a Microsoft account.

To create a new account, click on the Other accounts option. This will bring up another screen where the headline says ‘Manage other accounts’. Here you will be able to add an user with add an account. This will take you to the process of this person signing in. Note that the person you are trying to add must have a valid e-mail account. The kind of options you will see is to user a valid Microsoft account, Get a Microsoft Account, Add a child’s account. You are also able to create a child’s account with parental control on.

Managing users on Windows 10

Now as for the Windows 10 account section. This section differs a lot from the previous version. They completely moved the user accounts section to the user and groups panel and the Accounts app is here for more of a user account configuration purpose. One thing you can do is to add your family members here, however, you will have to go to hell and back to add a local user here though. Still, a member of the administrator.

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Even if you yourself believe you are doing everything needed to protect your personal data, this article will remind you of the mistakes you might be still making yourself.

Using a single password for every login you are using

One of the worst things a user of the Internet can do is using a single password to all of the possible logins he or she has online. Probably, there is only one thing which could be even worse than this practice which is leaving passwords in the place where anyone can reach them.

If you still do not understand why having one single password to all accounts is a rather bad idea, you should imagine what would happen if all of the possessions owned by a person required the same key to be entered including a coffer. Undeniably, when such a key is lost, all of the places can be opened without any struggle. The difference here is in the probability with which such a key can be lost. In the case of the key to your physical possessions the chances of loss are a way smaller than they are in the case of a digital password since, unlike the latter one, a physical key is used once you get into your private location, whereas a digital password is shared with all of the services which you are trying to access.

You never know at which point one of the services take a note of your password and then, scammers will use it to access the rest of your accounts including the bank ones.

For this reason, it is highly recommended to create different passwords for every account you have.

Having primitive passwords

Another common problem with passwords is the fact many Internet users still tend to create rather simple passwords even though they perfectly know it will be easier for scammers to find out such simple combinations. Furthermore, according to the latest statistics, the most common passwords used online are qwerty and 123456. These passwords have been on pick of popularity for quite a long, so, if it happens you have one of this passwords as well, you can imagine how easily hackers can guess it.

Of course, having such a password seems to be convenient as you can easily remember it, however, there is no sense in using a password which scammers already know.

Not using two-factor authentication

One more popular mistakes made by the Internet users is refusing from the usage of two-factor authentication which is rather bad idea.

The technology of two-factor authentication is a great way to protect your accounts with some additional shield since this technology will require some additional acts from a person who tries to get to your account and merely having a password is not enough. This is really a useful element of cybersecurity which should be used not only with banks and payment systems but also on your social media networks and a variety of other places where scammers can find your personal information or finances.

There are different solutions offered by the technology of two-factor authentication. One of the ways is receiving an additional code with an SMS. It will be required to insert this code to the logging window to your account. There is also another common option which is a push-notification coming to your account as well.

By the way, you can also come across special separate apps which will provide you with the function of two-factor authentication on different services. For instance, Google Authenticator is such an app.

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