Check if your PC’s plugged in. Yes, boys and girls, there’s been a lot of situation where the the computer gets unplugged when your electric-bill-crazy-mom would pull it out while you’re away from keyboard to save on the utility charges. Or you forgot that you pulled it out last night.

If it’s plugged, and the switch is in “on” position, check the following:

If that still doesn’t work then it’s time to open up your CPU. If your motherboard LEDs don’t light up then your power supply’s dead. However, if LEDS are lighting up then your Power button might be the culprit. If that’s the case you may need to replace the entire front bezel.

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Windows is notorious for logging in and off s-l-o-w-l-y. One of the main reasons for this are Windows programs. Albeit, they are important to help your computer run, it makes the lives of hectic people worse: especially if the Windows programs that keep it from logging on quickly are unimportant! So what do you do in these situations?

According to Techzone, for those using the Windows XP (not including Home version) and lower, you can download a software that specifically stops the unwanted/needed programs from loading at startup. I’ve personally tried it out and it does take a lot of these pests out of the startup.

Try it out!

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I have to admit, I haven’t cleaned my keyboard since I opened the box. No, don’t ask me how many months ago that was—it’s in years.

After reading this article I got scared pretty quick.

A desk is capable of supporting 10 million microbes and the average office contains 20,961 microbes per square inch, according to research.

The key offenders are telephones, which harbour up to 25,127 microbes per square inch, keyboards 3,295 and computer mice 1,676.

By contrast, the average toilet seat contains 49 microbes per square inch, the survey showed.

Immediately I googled the web like crazy until someone was able to show me how to PROPERLY clean my keyboard (that is if I ever bother to clean it at all). What? You thought your keyboard was self-cleaning? Time to get on your knees boy and start some scrubbing. Read this article

Keeping you personal computer secure nowadays is such a hard thing to do because of the viruses around. Even your little USB thumb drive can be a victim of these viruses. In fact, these thumb drives makes the transfer of viruses from PC to PC a lot more fast if they are left unsecure. Good thing, there are still free anti-virus softwares out there just like AVG is quite reliable since updates are released in a regular basis. If you use USB thumb drives, be sure to have them scanned by your anti-virus software before accessing it via Windows Explorer. You should also turn off the auto-play function when you plug in USB devices.

Image source: www.ecbuyph.com

Don’t have XP clear your paging file at shutdown. For security reasons, you can have XP clear your paging file (pagefile.sys) of its contents whenever you shut down. Your paging file is used to store temporary files and data, but when your system shuts down, information stays in the file. Some people prefer to have the paging file cleared at shutdown because sensitive information such as unencrypted passwords sometimes ends up in the file. However, clearing the paging file can slow shutdown times significantly, so if extreme security isn’t a high priority, you might not want to clear it. To shut down XP without clearing your paging file, run the Registry Editor (click Start > Run, then type regedit in the Run box) and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Change the value of ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 0. Close the Registry, and restart your computer. Whenever you turn off XP from now on, the paging file won’t be cleared, and you should be able to shut down more quickly.

Note: Please be careful when editing the Registry; you can do a lot of damage here. Don’t change or delete anything unless you know exactly what it is.

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Did one of your hardwares suddenly fail? I’ve experienced a lot of hardware crash in the past. I remember one time, my personal computer would boot but the monitor is black. I checked the monitor but it is working perfectly. What I did is open up the CPU and inspected my video card. Upon opening the CPU, I noticed the great amount of dust inside it. If this happened to you too, here are some things you could do:

• Remove your hardware from the motherboard. Get a pencil eraser and run it through the tip connecting the hardware to your motherboard (the golden thing).
• Clean the inside of your CPU with a brush and a vacuum cleaner. Just be careful.

After doing the above, my video card worked again perfectly.

Image source: www.pcextreme.net

If it works, you’re done! Congratulations on being extremely lucky! Karma will probably come around later and bite you in the ass.

If not, continue on. You may have a long road in front of you.

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A virus has two properties:

• It must be able to run itself.
• It must be able to replicate or duplicate itself.

Some viruses are designed to cause damage to the PC they are on by destroying programs, deleting user files, or reformatting the hard drive, but other viruses are merely prankster programs that spread and present a message in one form or another. But even these joke viruses must be removed because they can consume valuable system resources or cause the computer to crash.

A worm is different than a virus; it is a program that can spread from system to system within another document, such as an e-mail message or a Microsoft Word document.

A Trojan horse is a file that claims to be innocent but harbors malicious code that might do one of a number of different things, such as delete files or steal your data. The main difference between a Trojan horse and a worm or a virus is that a Trojan horse does not replicate itself.

It is quite easy to protect yourself from viruses, worms, and Trojan horses: install a good antivirus program (for example, Norton AntiVirus 2007, McAfee or ZoneAlarm) and keep it up-to-date. A good antivirus scanner will not only be able to detect and block any viruses, worms, or Trojan horses that try to enter you system, it will also be able to remove any malware already installed on your PC.

It is important to keep the antivirus application updated (it’s recommended that you upgrade the main software package yearly) and that you download and install the latest antivirus detection databases regularly, because hundreds of new viruses and worms are released weekly. If you don’t keep the detection databases in the program up-to-date, the app won’t be able to detect and repair anything new that finds its way onto your PC. Consult the help file or manual for your antivirus program to find out how to do this (most are able to update themselves automatically).

Here are a few other precautions you can take to keep yourself safe:

• Be suspicious of any e-mail attachments that you receive from unknown sources. E-mail is the main source of viruses, worms, and Trojan horses.
• Be suspicious of downloads sent to you via chat applications (such as MSN Messenger or AIM).
• Be picky about where you download files from on the Internet; many virus and worm writers use free software to disguise malicious applications.
• Make sure that your PC has all the latest patches and updates installed (if you run Windows, visit the Windows Update site to install all the patches your operating system needs).
• Scan all discs and downloads for viruses before running them.

Visit Download.com for a selection of popular anti-virus software downloads that you can try on your PC.

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• CPU (and heatsink/fan)
• A single stick of memory
• Video
• Power supply
• Power button

This means no drives, no peripherals, no extra ports, nothing. This tests two problems at once. They are the possibility of some peripheral preventing the system from powering up and the possibility of the motherboard shorting onto the case somehow (aka, a standoff that should not be there).

To do a quick elimination (only if the system is completely failing to give any power at all), find where the power button connects and short those two pins for a moment with anything conductive that you have on hand. A screwdriver, knife, coin, or anything metal will work. If the system spins up, you need a new power button. (If your system was already spinning up, you can skip this step.)

If the system fails to power up outside the case, here are two things you need to do. First, do a visual inspection of all the capacitors on the motherboard. These are the little battery-looking things. What you’ll be looking for is any fluid leaking out of the top or bottom, any “gook” anywhere on them, or if they are bulging out the top or sides.

While you’re poking around for bad capacitors, take a look at the ATX power connector; make sure it doesn’t have any scorch marks or look melted. If anything shows any of these characteristics, your motherboard is almost definitely your problem. If they all look ok, test repeatedly, with each stick of memory individually in each slot (this means nine tests for three sticks of memory on a board with three slots!).

If the system eventually powers up, you’ve found good memory — probably your only problem — and you’re probably done. Put the stripped-down version back into the case and secure it. If it powers up again, skip to step 9.

If not, you need to remove it again and investigate the setup of your motherboard standoffs and make sure nothing is touching the motherboard where it should not be touched. After this is done and all is well with the basics inside the case, skip to step 9.

If it fails to power up with any memory configuration out of the case, we know it must be either the CPU, the memory, the video, the motherboard, or the power supply, or any combination thereof.

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