Tag: Hard drive
September 30, 2009 by
Jason
When you consider that computers now consume about 10 percent of the electricity generated in North America and that a great many PCs still end up in landfills, leaching deadly chemicals, it makes sense to adopt more eco-friendly computing options.
John Hiddema, technical consultant for Nerds on Site, is one of the many people making a conscious effort to go green. He recycles, buys organic produce, uses cleaning products less harmful to the environment, owns energy-efficient appliances, and has configured his
PC to use less energy. He’s also going green on the job. Some of the work he does for clients’ computer systems can be done remotely from his home office, drastically reducing his need for a car.
Here are some tips for making your technology use more eco-friendly.
1. Manage power consumption
Did you know that approximately 40 percent of the energy used for home electronics is consumed while these devices are turned off or idling? Techies refer to computers and related gadgets that draw power while not in use as vampire load. Turn off and unplug everything when you’re not using it. Even simpler: shut down everything and then turn off the power bar. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Hardware | No Comments »
One way to speed up your computer is to increase your hard drive’s performance. If you’ve been using your computer for a while, you’ve probably noticed that your computer is getting slower. One reason for this is that your hard drive has gotten more fragmented over time.
This means that as you install and delete things from your hard drive, holes are being created and filled randomly with other files so, say, your video of Madonna might be broken up into thirty pieces all over your hard drive, slowing down its playback.
Well, Windows XP has a Disk Defragmenter that will solve all your woes. It takes the pieces of each file and puts them together again so they can be read in one clean pass.
Be sure to run this program at night since it takes several hours and make sure to close any open programs. Go to Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmentor to access it.
Click the Analyze button. It’ll tell you if you need to defragment your hard drive.
A lot of red is a bad sign. If it says “You should defragment this volume”, click the Defragment button. Come back in a few hours, and your hard drive should be purring.
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
If you have more than one operating system installed on your PC for example, you may have both Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta installed – your computer displays a menu asking you which operating system you want to load. If you don’t select an operating system within 30 seconds, it automatically loads your default operating system.
You can cut the amount of time your computer waits for your input before loading Windows Vista by going back to Msconfig and selecting the Boot tab. Where it says Timeout, change the number to a lower setting, but give yourself enough time to actually make your choice. If you only have Windows Vista installed on your machine, you don’t need to complete this step.
Fix notifications
Windows Vista is great at letting you know if there’s a problem with your computer. Your antivirus program should also alert you to potential problems, such as when a virus has been found or if you haven’t downloaded and installed the latest update for the software. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
February 22, 2009 by
Jason 1. Problem Steps Recorder
As the local PC guru you’re probably very used to friends and family asking for help with their computer problems, yet having no idea how to clearly describe what’s going on. It’s frustrating, but Microsoft feels your pain, and Windows 7 will include an excellent new solution in the Problem Steps Recorder.
When any app starts misbehaving under Windows 7 then all your friends need do is click Start, type PSR and press [Enter], then click Start Record. If they then work through whatever they’re doing then the Problem Steps Recorder will record every click and keypress, take screen grabs, and package everything up into a single zipped MHTML file when they’re finished, ready for emailing to you. It’s quick, easy and effective, and will save you hours of troubleshooting time.
Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
February 14, 2009 by
Jason
One of the most important feature which almost every windows user wants in windows is to protect the private files with password. Many people keep some of the very sensitive files on their hard drive and other portable drives which they don’t want other to see.
Androsa (Password Protect Files Via Ghacks.net) is a free password file protector to protect your confidential documents or any other file with a secret password. It lets you lock any file in windows with a secret password.
When ever you password protect any files with this program it will convert the file into an encrypted file which can be opened only with software and de-protected by entering the correct password. You can select among different encryptions method at the time of password protecting your files with this program.
Let’s see how simple you can password protect any program with this software. Read More»
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
February 08, 2009 by
Jason So you think that everything was going to be great and all will work fine when you upgraded to Internet Explorer 7and all your web browsing problem will be gone? but despite having the latest and stable version of Internet Explorer 7 problems still occurs, such as:
- Internet Explorer temporarily hangs up while loading certain webpages such as those that use the contain Adobe Acrobat Reader plugin or any pages that contain client-side Java applets.
- Web Pages takes more time to load than normally expected even if you have high speed internet connection and your computer just comes from a fresh restart.
- Internet Explorer just stops responding and even refuses to be terminated even if you attempt to end it’s process.
- Internet Explorer spontaneously crashes and stops running
Knowing the exact causes Internet Explorer 7 problems is just as much a mystery now as it has always been with previous versions of this web browser. Read More»
Posted in Internet | 2 Comments »
January 16, 2009 by
Jason Linux rarely needs to be rebooted. But when it does, it’s often slow to boot. Fortunately, there are ways to speed things up. Some of these methods are not terribly difficult. (although some, unfortunately, are). Let’s take a look.
1. Disable unnecessary services
Depending upon the use of the machine, plenty of services won’t be needed. Using Linux just for a desktop? Then you won’t need sendmail, httpd, and many other services. If your server is only a Web server, you can shut off many services as well. To do this, you can go to the Administration menu and take a look at the Services entry. Just deselect all of the services you don’t want to start.
2. Disable unnecessary kernel modules
If your desktop is wired to the Ethernet, you don’t need to have a wireless kernel module loaded. This task is a bit more difficult and will require a kernel recompilation, which is not the easiest task to undertake. To do this, you will need the kernel sources. Then, follow the standard steps for compiling a kernel. The difference is that you’re going to go through your system and disable all of the modules you don’t need. Read More»
Posted in Linux | No Comments »
January 14, 2009 by
Jason For those of you who have waited long for the beta release of Windows 7, Micosoft has finally released the link for you to download a copy to test. In case you have not downloaded, here is the link:
The file size is about 2.4GB in size, so make sure you are on a broadband connection and have several hours to spare. You will have to burn it into a DVD to use it.
Once you have downloaded it, you will have to install it on a working machine in order to access the full functionality. As this is still a beta release and not suitable for daily production use, it is not wise to erase or upgrade your existing Vista to Windows 7. A good way is to create a dual boot system where you can choose to boot into Vista or Win 7. Here’s how it’s done:
Read More»
Posted in Windows 7, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
January 02, 2009 by
Jason Almost everyone who has worked with computers for any length of time at all has run into at least one situation in which a problem left a PC unbootable. What if you could return the machine to a bootable state just by inserting a USB flash drive though? Believe it or not, it is actually possible to install a bootable copy of Windows XP onto a flash drive and then boot a PC off of the flash drive. From there, you can use applications that you have installed on the flash drive (anti virus, anti spyware, disk repair, etc.) to fix the PC’s problem. In this article, I will show you how.
What’s the catch?
As with most cool new techniques, there are a few catches. For starters, not every PC is capable of booting from a USB flash drive. For the most part, computers manufactured within the last two years are generally able to boot from a flash drive. Older systems may require a BIOS update, or might not be able to boot from a flash drive at all.
Another catch is that not every flash drive will get the job done. The primary factors that limit your use of a particular flash drive are capacity and speed. Technically, speed isn’t really a limiting factor, but booting Windows will be painfully slow unless you use a flash drive that supports USB 2.0. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 9 Comments »
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