Basic PC Troubleshooting

• Pending Hard Drive Failure

  10Nov
  Categories: Hardware, Information, PC Tips, PC Troubleshooting Tips Comments: 0

  There are some signs to look out for when it comes to one of the most important parts of a computer system, your hard drive. Not only is this one of the most vital, it is also where most of the information is installed and stored making re-installment a pain indeed. Screeching, vibration and many other signs can be heard or felt that may give sign of pending failure so be sure to be aware of such issues. You could also try to back-up your most important files to a sizable flash drive to save you the effort of having to re-do everything you lost.

  As for the re-install of all the necessary software, you could also get somebody else to do it for you like the technician in the shop but be prepared to shell out a few bucks just for that(not considering the other software you may need installed that he may have to find for you = additional charges).

• Common Monitor Problems

  10Oct
  Categories: PC Tips, PC Troubleshooting Tips Comments: 0

  

  My monitor is black.

  Solution:

  1. Make sure the monitor is turned on. Try pressing the power button on the monitor again.
  2. Check to see if it is in sleep mode. Wiggle the mouse around or press the enter key.
  3. If the green light is not on in front, check the power cord connecting the monitor into the outlet.
  4. If the green light is on, check the brightness level by using the buttons on the monitor.
  5. Check the cable connection from the monitor into the computer or the equipment that links your computer to the TV monitor.
  6. If you still have some problems, call your help desk.

• Clearing the CMOS

  10Dec
  Categories: PC Tips, PC Troubleshooting Tips Comments: 0

  

  This is often the solution, and it’s frustrating because it’s incredibly simple. All you have to do is find out from the motherboard manual where the CMOS jumper is. Make sure the system has no source of power (meaning the power supply is unplugged and the battery is removed). Then, move the CMOS jumper over the pins that clear it. After a few moments, put the jumper back, plug the power and battery back in, and try it.

  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.

  Source

• Info on Viruses, Worms, Trojans

  10Nov
  Categories: PC Info, PC Tips Comments: 0

  

  Viruses and worms are computer programs deliberately designed and written to alter the way your computer works, without your permission or knowledge.

  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.

  Source

• Stripping down your Computer

  10Oct
  Categories: PC Maintenance Tips, PC Tips, PC Troubleshooting Tips Comments: 0

  

  The first thing you should do is remove the system from the case, place it on a non-conductive surface, and disconnect all components from the motherboard with these exceptions

  • 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.

  Source

• LCD or CRT

  10Sep
  Categories: PC Tips Comments: 0

  

  When you’re buying a new computer, you’re usually given several options in terms of display. There are super-large, widescreen 20-plus inch LCDs. There are the modest, 15-inch CRTs. Then of course, there are the 15-inch LCDs and also large CRTs.

  While LCD monitors have been considered gold standard in office computing these days, CRTs still have a place in the computing world. Not all environments are ideal for using LCD monitors, after all.

  Here’s a summary of the pros and cons of each.
  The CRT
  * The good: Cheap, excellent color reproduction, crisp display, great for games and videos.
  * The bad: Large, Gives off some heat and radiation, consumes more electricity.

  The LCD
  * The good: Great for the eyes, saves space, cheaper electricity bills.
  * The bad: More expensive to buy, limited resolution options, limited color range.

  To summarize, LCD monitors are ideal in situations that require you to stare at the computer for longer periods of time. This is because LCDs give off less radiation than CRT screens. So this means they’re ideal in office settings, for example when editing documents, using spreadsheets, and communicating via email, and even for surfing the Web.

  However, LCD monitors sometimes don’t have the capability for high refresh rates that CRT monitors have, and therefore CRT might still be useful for online gaming and video. CRT monitors can also switch across different resolutions easily, so you can play games at different resolutions (say, if performance is lagging at high resolutions, you can lower it a bit using game settings). LCDs only work best at native resolutions, and you tend to get aliasing issues when you switch to lower resolutions.

  Then of course, there’s the price factor. LCD’s are more expensive off the shelf. But if you’re in it for the long term, consider that LCD monitors eat up less power than CRT monitors, so you can save on electricity bills if you keep your computers on all the time.

  via [PCExtreme]

• PC Tips : Cooling A hot PC

  10Aug
  Categories: PC Tips Comments: 0

  
  

  Nowadays every PC that come of the market are hot.. not hot in good way, but hot that is hot enough to fry an egg. Without proper cooling your PC can produce heat up to 350 C, as hot as an oven.

  Now to PC user this may seem fine, but in the hands of modders and over clockers that squeeze every ounce of performance power out of their PCs this may cause a problem as you modify your PCs factory setting you tend to increase it’s power output thus generating more heat. The traditional heatsink is will do for most PC users, but for serious PC afficionados this will never do, so they use cooling fans, and a much more tricky approach which is water-cooling.

  Heatsinks - these are chunks of high thermal conducting metal such as aluminum, copper, etc. As electric warms up the components it dissipates through the heatsink, that’s why heatsinks are more like fins as the heat spreads over the surface it dissipates through the fins which are surrounded by cooler air.

  Cooling Fans – these work like heatsinks but well they use fans to suck out the hot air and blow cooler air. Now the more cooling fans you add to your rig the more cooler it gets, but the more fans you add the noisier your Rig gets, so over clockers look for other cooling solution such as Liquid Cooling.

  Liquid Cooling – the best but hardest way to cool your PC, a liquid cooled PC moves fluid over hot components transferring the heat from those components to the liquid, then the hot liquid goes to its cooling block the cycle back again, a liquid cooled PC maybe the best solution but also think of the maintenance and the cost of leaked, or clogged tube which could damage the PC electrical component in an instant. Now there are liquid coolants out in the market that works better in cooling your PC such as distilled water and add them up with anti-corrosion liquids and non-toxic fluid additives to care for the environment, yourself and your PC. Maintenance of these liquid cooling system must be checked at least once a month, and the liquid coolant itself must be change annually to prevent algae buildup in your cooling tubes.

  via [PCExtreme]

• USB Thumb Drives can harm your PC too

  10Jul
  Categories: PC Info, PC Tips, Software Comments: 0

  

  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

• Avast: Free Anti-Virus Software for your PC

  10May
  Categories: PC Info, PC Maintenance Tips, PC Tips, Windows Vista, Windows XP Comments: 0

  

  To ensure the top quality performance rendered by our personal computers, we should make sure that we have the most up to date anti-virus softwares. Our anti-virus softwares installed on our computes will be the one to protect our precious computers from threats and viruses. We all know how expensive premium anti-virus softwares can be these days. But don’t fret anymore because there are free anti-virus softwares out there just like Avast Home Edition which I am using for years on my personal computer. The free version of Avast is very much reliable as updates are released often and the software auto-updates itself. With this software, you are sure that your computer is safe from viruses that can degrade the quality of performance your computers is rendering.

  Image source: www.arifin-88.co.cc

• Your Keyboard is Worse than Your Toilet

  12Dec
  Categories: Hardware, PC Info, PC Maintenance Tips, PC Tips Comments: 0

  

  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