Home Computer Talk

By: Mr JM
For my situation, it’s not as drastic as having to freeze the hard drive. And we have a home network to connect a number of computers so transferring the data is easier than having to copy things out to a DVD or CDROM.

What I did do was buy a new hard disk – we went to the local Computer Swap-Meet (a market where small traders get together once a month) and found a 500GB (GigaByte) SATA hard disk for eighty dollars. It is easily big enough to take all the data I want from the old machine with space left over.

Once I have the new machine set up with all my programs and information, I will clean my current computer and set it up with all the installation software and use it as a server for our network so we can store downloads there and backup our documents and data.

Then every so often, we write out files to a DVD in 4.5GB chunks and store them as extra backups.

The current task is to install the new hard disk in the new machine and get it formatted. Then I make sure the new machine runs on the network as it should and I can start copying the data over.

The first step in getting the new machine set up has already been done – I logged into the manufacturers’ sites and found Windows XP drivers for all the main bits of the computer. The place to start for this is on the Motherboard maker’s web page.

In the CMOS settings, entered by pressing [Delete] (or [Del]) on most machines, although sometimes it’s [F2] or [F1] you will find a motherboard ID or BIOS number. It may look something like RL86510A.86A.0089 on an Intel motherboard, which on checking on the site shows a D865PERL Main board. That will then lead to a variety of drivers to download.

The essential ones are normally onboard ones such as video, network and sound, but there may also be chipset drivers which will tell Windows how to ‘talk’ optimally to the hardware and can give a performance boost to the system

Windows comes with a built-in Time Machine function. It’s called System Restore and it offers a way to roll back changes and let Windows work as it did before the change messed it up.

Many people wind up with a computer that either stops working, does strange things or begins to run really slow for no apparent reason. Some of the strange things (more…)

Recently Microsoft announced the release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. They also released Service Pack 1 for Vista.
Seems strange to be updating the old Windows while releasing fixups for the new one, but there is more.

Microsoft was also planning on dropping support for WinXP in the near future, (more…)

You’re sitting in front of the glowing screen, slaving over the latest epic, designing the perfect spreadsheet, perfecting the genetic path of your ancestors. or just composed the perfect response to the emotional wasteland of a young person in crisis.

Like all conscientious computer users, you Save your work regularly. Then you go for dinner, come back & try to open your document & it’s not there!
It might be an older version, it may have corruption in it or you may even start getting Windows errors.

You search and investigate and suddenly get the dreaded Blue Screen of Death!

There’re other symptoms; printers can suddenly be unusable, the computer may not start at all or your friends may start asking why you enquiring about whether they’re happy with their penis size. They can all point to the same cause – you’ve got virus!

(more…)

In Part 1 of Old Age…? I talked about defrag and the speed increases it can give. Here is the process mentioned in Part 2

What is needed is to restore Windows to something approaching the condition it was in when it was first installed. Remember how zippy it was when you first got the computer? So what we need to do is to start the computer using the Windows CDROM rather than the Hard Disk. To do this we interrupt the normal start up procedure.

(more…)

Continued from yesterday…

MS Vista and MS Office continue on the upgrade path, yet talking to Mr JM, and by experience among friends and colleagues, nobody actually uses more than 10 or 15% of the features included. Most people would be just as productive with Windows 98SE and Office 97, yet release after release is sold and the ongoing chase for your hard-earned cash continues.

When Windows XP first released, it came with a need for 64MB of RAM and could actually be run on 32MB. With Service Pack 3 just released, (see here for details if you’re technically inclined) you’d find it difficult to get decent performance with less than 256MB of RAM and 512MB would be better.

Vista is released with a suggested minimum of 1GB of RAM, but anyone trying to run it in that configuration will be very disappointed with the performance – practical resources would be 2GB or better. Office 2007 runs reasonably in 512MB of RAM but is happier with 1GB or more.

We’ve come a long expensive way from 1MB RAM in your desktop!

So, what to do about it? Well unless you’re a gamer, or your business is high end computer use such as graphics design or video editing, simply ask yourself, ‘Is my computer doing all I need of it?’ And remember, internet browsing is distinctly NOT one of the high end reasons for a top-of-the-line computer. If your PC is doing all you require of it, stick with it. A standard desktop should last 5 years (or more) and laptops in business use commonly have a turnover time of 3 years.

If your PC does all you need but does it too slowly, bookmark this site and call back regularly – I’ll be covering things you can do to speed it up, to clean it up, to upgrade only needed parts, and to protect your PC and information from outside interference.

Remember, you can ask questions or post experiences and I will answer them – if I can’t, Mr JM will be able to help and I will pass along his experience.

Windows, Office, ungrade

This is a story of intrigue, misdirection, conning the public and money gathering that beggars the imagination. It’s also an unstoppable game being played that fits in seamlessly with our consumer society.

The Wintel Game. The game has been played now for so long that the main player can release its main product knowing in advance that it can announce a major repair of things gotten wrong and its clients will still buy the original. One player has dropped to the background a little, forced out of the forefront by the limitations of technology, or rather of physics. But Microsoft (MS) rolls on.

What is the ‘game’? It’s been running for quite some time, ever since the guy who stated that he could see no reason why anyone would ever want more than 1MB (MegaByte) of memory in their PC. That’s right, 1 MB! You most likely have 20,000 times that (2 Gigabyte) in your USB drive. Cameras commonly have 5,000 times that amount.

Then Bill Gates and Intel got their heads together and so began the Wintel Game. How it works is this… You buy a computer, whiz-bang-for-your-buck and state-of-the-art. Within a few months, MS releases a new version of Windows, or perhaps of MS Office that pushes the boundary out further. Your pride and joy now runs slower and soon you see that flashy new Intel computer being advertised and find a need to upgrade your hardware to regain the speed you had on your original machine.

One way they did this is by inserting Easter Eggs in the software. Easter eggs are undocumented codes that will run various functions (there was a flight simulator hidden in Excel 97 and Excel 2000 had a game). MS is supposed to have officially stopped inserting Easter eggs, but there was only ever one reason to do it – Easter eggs increased the size of the executable file and so brought the user closer to requiring an upgrade of their hardware.

So as we explore further into the computing world, and as you learn the tips and tricks I glean from the labyrinthine mind of a professional Helpdesk engineer, you will be better placed to decide if you want to continue playing the Wintel Game.