Prevention is the best medicine when it comes to avoiding illness in ourselves. Prevention in the computer world is no different. And like a newborn baby, a newly purchased computer is subject to many terrible diseases and problems if not properly cared from the moment it is taken from its cardboard box. I follow these steps when setting up a new computer system for my clients, and recommend this methodology for all new computer setups:
This tip conjures up some points from older tips, but needs to be reiterated. Follow these rules-of-thumb to keep your system clean and more importantly running smoothly.
Use these rules when deleting individual files:
looking ‘windows’ icons (see picture), do not delete it (again unless you created it).Use these rules when deleting programs or applications:
Since I use Firefox exclusively for my browsing, I haven’t seen this problem yet, but today I ran into a computer that could print from anywhere but Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Turns out that, in her case, the upgrade to AVG 8.0 caused the problem. A standard installation of AVG 8 installs a security toolbar in Firefox, if you use it, or Internet Explorer 7. The toolbar is meant to help users from clicking on potentially harmful web links. However, the toolbar, like most toolbars, slows down browsing speeds and in the case of Internet Explorer 7 with Windows Vista, it also disables the ability to print!
I’m always surprised at how many computer users equate the speed of their computer with the speed of their Internet. If you have a brand new computer, it will not make your dial-up connection faster. Likewise, if you have an older computer, a fast cable or DSL connection will not make the computer faster.
Internet speed only makes your Internet experience faster or slower. If you have a high speed connection and your computer slows down or the Internet speed seems slow, the problem is due to the computer not your Internet connection…most of the time. Calling your Internet provider for computer speed problems is like calling the Department of Transportation because you ran out of gas on the highway.
Adobe released version 9 of their PDF (Portable Document Format) Reader program. Once the king and almost sole PDF reader on the market, it, like so many other mainstream programs, has become bloated beyond recognition. This software bloat slows down the performance of even the fastest computers, and for this reason, I firmly stand against software bloat.
Microsoft Framework .NET consists of a set of tools that allow programmers to tap into some web related technologies for creating rich, interactive applications for our computers and web sites. Unfortunately, it sometimes causes problems as well. This week alone, I helped 3 Quickbooks users overcome problems with their programs hanging or failing to start by uninstalling and reinstalling the .NET Framework.
Starting with Windows 95 all the way through today’s Windows Vista, Microsoft supplied computer users with a great tool listing the different hardware devices attached to and residing in our computers. This tool is called the Device Manager.
Today’s tip focuses on how to use the Device Manager to troubleshoot a video card, sound card or other internal hardware problem. If you suddenly lose sound or your monitor’s picture lacks the quality it had before, or you can’t connect your high speed modem to your computer, this tip will solve the problem a high percentage of the time.
1. RIGHT Click on My Computer from your desktop or Start menu (XP & Vista)
2. Click Properties (or use the Windows key + Pause/Break key to replace these two steps)
3. Click Device Manager (Windows 95-Me, Vista). or in WindowsVista Click the Hardware tab –> then click Device Manager (XP)
4. Click the “+” sign next to the device having the problem
5. RIGHT Click the device itself
6. Click Remove (Windows 95-Me) or Uninstall (XP & Vista)
7. Close any open screens and shut down your computer (don’t just restart, shut it all the way off)
8. When Windows restarts, it should re-recognize your hardware and function properly again.
If these steps don’t work, then you get some extra computer help.
Watch the short (2 minutes) video below to see these steps in action!
If you search for the word “Norton” using the search engine in the upper right corner of our website, you will discover that our advice to dump Norton branded software is echoed by dozens of other visitors to the site.
This week I saw a computer that took 27 minutes to completely boot up. It was an older system with 256MB of RAM and a 1.6ghz processor. Even at that, 27 minutes was a long time.
I noticed that they had the latest version of Norton 360 installed. I told them that the system would at least double in speed if they uninstalled Norton. “I know you don’t like it, but we already paid for it.”
Agreed but took the system home intending to reformat it and add RAM over the weekend.
By now many of you have figured out that computers are unruly beasts. They seem to be fine one day and schizophrenic the next. As a person who troubleshoots computers for a living, I’m going to let you in on a little trade secret.
When something on your computer seems to be a little left of center, stop and ask yourself three questions: