If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

That brand new PC that you bought a while back inevitably slows down. This is caused by a number of things. Depending on how computer savvy you are, will depend on how many different things are slowing your PC down. Some people regularly delete files like temporary internet files and cookies by doing a Disk Cleanup on a regular basis. These same people typically do a regular disc defrag. This helps, but there’s much more needed!

Let’s talk about some other things that can be done to put some zip back into your aging and ailing PC.

Number 1 - Do a Fresh Install of Windows XP
I’m mentioning this option first, because if you decided you had enough know how to do this, then you can skip the next two options.

By doing a complete reinstall of Windows, I’m talking about completely reformatting your hard drive and installing Windows fresh. This means that you’ll have to reinstall all of your software, some hardware, and probably set up things like mail and internet service again. Not to mention you’ll need to go get all the recent security and critical updates.

The benefits to reinstalling Windows fresh are:

• The registry will be clean and unfragmented
• All unnecessary files will be gone
• Boot up will be much quicker

So if you’re not ready to tackle a fresh install of Windows, skip this option and move on to the simpler optimizing options.

I’m not going to go into a step by step tutorial on reinstalling Windows here. If this option doesn’t frighten you, then you probably can handle it. If you have another computer available to you while doing this, just put any problems you come across in Google or Yahoo. That’s what I do when I get into trouble.
Read The Full Entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

You don’t have to lose everything. And you probably didn’t.

I’ll just say this before I go any further. If your hard drive totally crashes, as in you dropped your computer and it makes this horrible noise when you try to turn it on, You’re Screwed!

Otherwise, a simple crash that keeps the system from booting doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve lost all your files and pictures stored on your computer. I believe that most people are under this impression. Although you will have to replace the hard drive, you can most likely recover most of your data. If any sectors were damaged, it will probably take the files that were there along with it.

This article is for those who are at least a little computer savvy and have at least opened up their computer case a couple of times. If this frightens you, then get some help, but don’t let someone just wipe out your hard drive without saving your files first. It happened to me, and I’d hate to see it happen to you!

Here are some common signs of a hard drive about to crash. I’ll give this list in order of early signs to critical signs.
Read The Full Entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

We’ve all heard the horror stories of how someone lost all their important and irreplaceable information when the hard drive died, or worse yet, your computer was stolen, or completely wrecked by fire or whatever! Are you prepared? If not, let’s get prepared right away. Read on, it’s not that difficult to do, and you’ll be happy you did.

I highly recommend doing a daily backup. There are some nice backup software utilities you can purchase. There are also some nice one’s that can be downloaded for free. You can use the one that XP provides, but personally, I’ve found it to be unreliable.

I’m not going to go into an extensive list of different backup utilities here. You can do a search in Google or Yahoo for that. I will however, recommend the freebie I found, EZBackitup, it works great for me, and has a very easy User Interface.

1) Internal Drive
I don’t recommend using an extra internal drive for backup. Some do, but if your computer were stolen for instance, so is your backup!

2) Firewire and USB External Drives
These drives are a great choice for backup. Some are even entirely powered from the USB cable. They come in a variety of storage capacity to fit your needs.
Read The Full Entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This of course is not recommended for someone that doesn’t know the difference between a processor and a power supply, but if you’ve opened the box a couple of times and made a few additions, replacements, or attempted simple repairs, then I think you can do it!

I was just remembering my first time (wow, that sure stirs up some other kind of memories!. Ok, back to the subject at hand!). After a computer of mine in the late 90’s crashed, I took it in for repair and spent over $300.00 to get it back to where it was before it crashed, (with a slight upgrade in processor speed). Not to mention I lost a lot of info on the hard drive.

A few months later, my power supply died. I decided I could do this myself and save some money this time. I admit it was a bit intimidating at first, but I was successful and saved some money to boot! After that, I started adding in memory, video cards, etc.

Now to that first time! A friend of mine who builds computers suggested I try building my own rather than having him do it for me. So I gave it a try with a few pointers from him to get me started in the right direction. That was in 2002. The computer is still running fine today. (with a few upgrade mods that is). I’ll admit it took me 4 times as long to build as it would today, but the point is, I did it myself and saved half the cost of a new one!
Read The Full Entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I call it “Tenacious Research”

I can best explain this with a short story. It’s not long, I promise. And hopefully the fix at the end of this story will help someone with the same problem.
Read The Full Entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!