Section: Hardware

Clone Hard Drives For Free

February 02, 2007 by Jason

What’s the best way to backup your hard drive? Simple, clone it, and if the worst ever happens you can connect up your clone drive and continue working. Drive cloning is not as easy as it sounds, at least not without specialist or expensive software, but here’s a freebie program that promises to as good a job as its commercial rivals for one-off and occasional use.
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Saving Memory and Increasing Speed

February 01, 2007 by Jason
  • In Windows 9x/Me, the system cache setting is not always optimised. A software called Cacheman will do this for you. In Windows 2000/XP, try changing the I/O lock page size. To do this, you can use Xteq Systems X-Setup. Choose the appropriate setting under System » Memory.

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    Device Manager to pc Performance

    February 01, 2007 by Jason
  • Keyboard shortcuts: There may have been times when your mouse was not detected and you had a hard time getting around the device manager. Here are the navigation keys with Device Manager. If you are in the desktop, press the TAB key repeatedly until My Computer is selected. Then press the CONTEXT MENU key, which is between the left Ctrl key and the Windows Key. This opens up the context menu for the My Computer. Now select Properties from this menu. Now you see the System Properties window. This has several tabs, one of which is the Device Manager. Press Ctrl+TAB repeatedly to move to Device Manager. Now you see all the devices listed. Press TAB to move to them. To open up any particular device, press the RIGHT ARROW and to shrink it up press LEFT ARROW. To open up the properties of any particular device, press ALT+ENTER or the CONTEXT MENU key.

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    Disk Swap to pc Performance

    February 01, 2007 by Jason
  • Console-based OSs like DOS have only modest memory requirements. GUI-based operating systems like Windows needs lot of memory, much larger than the RAM that is usually installed on PCs. So, they use something called virtual memory. Here, a large file on the hard disk is used in conjunction with the RAM, which greatly expands the memory available to the OS. Only the data that is required at the given moment is loaded on the RAM; the rest is cached on the swap file. Just like any other file on a disk, the swap file can also get fragmented over time and OS might seem to slow down. To prevent the swap from breaking up, you can place it on a dedicated partition (just like in Linux). Set the size of this partition at about 2.5 times the size of your installed RAM and format it. Next, you need to make sure that the OS does not reserve space on this partition for deleted files because this partition is going to have only one file – the swap file. From the Recyle Bin context menu, choose Properties » Configure drives independently. Select the partition’s tab and select the Do not move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files immediately when deleted option. Read More»

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    Disk Partitions to pc Performance

    February 01, 2007 by Jason

    li>Primary Partitions, Extended Partitions and Logical Partitions: A hard disk can have a maximum of only 4 partitions, which are called PRIMARY PARTITIONS. In the early days of the PC, this four-partition limit was deemed sufficient. To go beyond this limit, a special kind of primary partition called EXTENDED PARTITION was invented. A hard disk could have ONLY ONE extended partition but this particular partition could have any number of smaller partitions called LOGICAL PARTITIONS housed inside it. Read More»

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    Vista and Your Games

    January 31, 2007 by Jason

    Windows Vista Beta 2 is a landmark. While it’s too early for us to say with confidence that you can use it all day for your normal tasks, Beta 2 is solid enough for us to report on this important question: How well will your games run on this new OS?

    To find out if Vista’s got game, we set up the 32-bit version of Vista Beta 2 on a high-end gaming test rig using a 2.8-GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 chip, an nVidia nForce 590 SLI chipset, 2 gigabytes of mem­ory, an ATI Radeon X1900 XTX graphics card, a Creative sound card, and a 160GB Seagate hard drive. ATI released new drivers on the Web to coincide with Beta 2, and nVidia did the same with platform drivers, so we used the latest and greatest.
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    Posted in Hardware, Software, Windows Vista | 3 Comments »

    Hardware to pc performance

    January 31, 2007 by Jason
  • Choice of CPU: Because ordinary people do not know much about computers, they simply buy one that has an Intel processor. More discerning buyers get PCs with AMD processors. Benchmark tests by prominent computer magazines and websites have shown that AMD Athlon processors score over Intel Pentium processors. Unlike Intel CPUs, AMD processors natively support both 32-bit and 64-bit software. AMD processors consume less power and consequently generate less heat. Hence, they do not require huge noisy fans. AMD is also a much better consumer-friendly company. It has been contributing to the development of open standards, which results in cheaper PC components. Intel, on the contrary, had tried to impose proprietary products like the RD-RAM memory technology, which was developed by its subsidiary Rambus. The biggest argument for AMD processors is the cost. AMD CPUs are always cheaper than Intel’s. Remember, it is always the consumer who ultimately pays for the advertising and marketing expenses.

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    How to Bypass a Bios Password

    January 30, 2007 by Jason

    Note: This is for those moments when you simply don’t remember your password.

    1. Turn off your computer and then unplug it.
    2. Open your computer case.
    3. Look for the Bios battery. The Bios battery is circular and has a silver color.
    4. Remove the CMOS battery and leave it out for about 5 minutes. This will reset the Bios to factory configurations.
    5. Set the battery back into place and power on the computer.
    6. The computer should then warn you that the CMOS configuration could not be found. You can either reconfigure it yourself or restore to defaults. Restoring the default configuration should be fine.
    7. You will notice that the BIOS password has been reset. Now you can choose your new password

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    Five Steps to Extend Your Computer is Life

    January 28, 2007 by Jason

    Early this year, a quiet turn of the calendar marked Year Six for $1.8 million worth of desktop and server computers at a cutting-edge product-development company where I was chief information officer. The strategy used to ensure that the computers reached this landmark birthday was simple we based their maintenance schedule on that of our cars.

    The average automobile, if you follow its maintenance schedule, protect it from rust, and drive reasonably, should last you six to 10 years. The maintenance schedule is based on your use of the car as a complex tool to get you from Point A to Point B. Your computer is also a complex tool and your usage will determine its maintenance and protection needs; how you follow through with those needs will determine how long you’ll get to use your computer and when you’ll need to shift monies away from your mission toward your computer. Read More»

    Posted in Computer, Hardware | 1 Comment »

    How to Fix Bad Sectors on your Hard Disk

    January 26, 2007 by Jason

    1: Double-click on “My Computer”.
    2: Select the disk/partition that you want to diagnose and repair.
    3: Right click on the disk/partition you selected and click on “Properties”
    4: Choose the “Tools” tab.
    5: Click the “Check Now” button under “Error Checking Status”.
    6: Depending on your type of Windows, choose “Thorough” or “Scan for and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors.”
    7: Click Start.

    Posted in Hardware, Windows XP | 1 Comment »

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