Because i Love Computers

[andy01424]

ok yes i do love them hate them, like every thing else theres always some advice some where so thought will pass some of mine on to ;will add links to help out to

If you have'nt got it suggest you get it its totally free the wonderful CCleaner
www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download use the piriform link not file hippo in Free version...now check all but last 2 in each box in windows tab,in advanced you will get warning message just click or hit enter for Ok

if any one uses P2P recommend very useful tool is Auslogics

For vista users and any Xp ones tune it try here www.blackviper.com
only adjust anything if you feel confident if not leave well alone

For people who may want to upgrade vista to Win 7 yes there is a a cheap way!!! and legal !!!!!! but you must have either a child or granchild in school or in Uni/College,i used my daughter lol
www.software4students.co.uk/t/brands/windows-7
there is also other software available there to
....................................................................
Now for some tips:
internet found that some are still using the old router and white filter this causes a few problems dump the filters and buy a BT Master NTE5,ther anything from £6 -£10,and dead easy to fit,they have built in filters,stopped all my internet drops
............................................
Win 7 easier to navigate the Control Panel
open Control panel--open Appearance and Personalization,look for Task bar and Start menu,click on Customise Start menu,in the start menu tab to the right is Customise button click it and open it a new window appears..... now all the way down check the "Display as Menu",if you want smaller menu uncheck Use large icons ,also check the run box that comes in useful,now click ok ,then apply ...now when you go to start all your items in Control panel will show alphabetically also documnents.....

Now for Win 7 users theres a very helpful tool! when you have done the above ,its called "Action Center"[vista does not have it] if you click on that you will see Maintenance click on that in blue you will see Reliabilty History click on that ,if you see a red X then it shows a problem, blue advice, yellow warning,handy when you have a crash!

For XP/Vista/Win 7; Go control Panel System ,System devices -advanced settings..you will see Start up and recovery click on that and uncheck Automatically Restart,this will stop comp shutting down on stupid things and restarting again usually windows failures

Anti virus- we all love to have it,except me! i dont have any inc Win Firewall or Win Defender and in 15yrs have only had 2 trojans

Norton/Macafee,while maybe good are resource hungry will take a lot of your system ram to use it,Avg and Avast all free are just as good and will not suck ram from your system

Software updates:
Biggest problem with these is newer updates pick up basic the crap from old ones,best way to do it is to totally uninstall old one,run a registry clear[ccleaner has one] then go into your C:drive and remove the folder,run reg cleaner again,restart comp and then install new update.....
Doing the above with CCleaner erg cleaner it will remove all the old hotkeys left behind on instal

Windows updates fail:
2 ways of sorting this ,again using CCleaner or go into your C: drive and empty Temp folder then retry the updates[do not do it if you do not feel comfortable]

Your PC getting old want a new one,it will cost you less than you thought,you can upgrade for less than £200 to a pretty decent rig,places like Dabs Ebuyer,Eclipse,Scan, etc all do motherboard and pc bundles many inc memory with them,if by chance some dual cores will unlock to Quad cores and work fine[did my daughters] just check that the motherboard will fit your case or even better buy a new case for under £30! if you want to give it a go Youtube has plenty of building a PC,believe me its pretty easy and can save you ££££'s

Comp or Lappy Dies ie: wont start

first you may get a bsod known as Blue Screen of Death,now these usally come with a msg read it if possible,most seem to be a graphic issue,if you can restart and hold F8 down and select safe mode if you have a spare PC or Lappy down load new driver and then uninstall old one restart comp reload new one and see if it fixs it,if not worse case scenario is the HD is failing

if you dont get the BSOD and just a black screen also try reinstalling Windows,if that does not work do not despair! all may not be lost,open your Pc/Lappy and remove HD start it up is you see the bios screen [shows pc/lap info memory etc ,then its the HD failed

For the confident PC person ONLY..i hold no responsibilty at all with this you use it at your own risk!!!!!!
no matter how many times you uninstal reinstall windows,it basic just overites existing one,best way to have a CLEAN drive is basically nuke it! format doesnt do it.....
theres a wonder free disc you can do!! like free me ,the programme is called DBan,you download it burn to disc and it runs in Dos on startup,if you have more than one drive and want to keep what you have on spare drives disconnect them first or they will be erased even external ones!DBAN takes anything upto 8hrs to run its course,when its done nothing is recoverable from it its totally blank,you prob would need FBI software to find a thing on it

..............
if any need help with anything i will try to help,i am no comp tech or anything just been playing and building comps for yrs as a hobby for friends family etc,hence why made a spare bedroom into my comp room with 2 ,25" inch moniotrs and cinema surround sound[600 watts of it yes neighbours love me lol] will add even though i am 50 i do love online gaming! plus i do have a very helpful lady i know in Canada who just retired, ran the whole IT for the Candanian revenue service and she is one genius of a lady and very helpful...
i will add more tips in here by modifying my post later on

[Brian]

Some great information there mate.

I`ll try some of them later.

Thanks

[chykensa]

Thanks for the tips, Andy - I already have CCleaner and run it regularly, amazing what it picks up! I'll try some of our other hints when the time arises, thanks for posting!

[Bluefish]

Good tip's andy. Question, would you reccomend buying a new laptop, or having one built, I ask as I have this desktop and another really old 4 yrs laptop, that only has 50gig usable total 60gig, 1gig ram, battery knackered, and obviously has system faults as it crashes loads, well mainly if you move it, pick it up when it's on it will crash and restart, it doesn't bother me cos i use the desktop, but it pisses the mrs right off lol she took it to a friends hubby to have a look at and he said all was ok, don't know what he did but if anything i'd say it worse than befor he had a look at it. Any how seeing as you can get a new lappy for less than 300 squidly's these days, I'm not sure if getting one built is worth while? what say ye? cheers andy.

[meeee]

I would buy one every time. Buy one from a decent company where you know they would have tested everything works together properly. A lot of these built to order pc's that are out there are just bits put in a box and quite often you find alot of the parts they have used are low grade and not overly compatable with each other.

Of course that's just my opinion

[ChillerVapes]

I bought a good brand (sony viao), high spec laptop once, it broke after the warranty period and is unrepairable. (graphics chip needs reballing)

I never had anything fail when I built my own, even when I over clocked them.

If you want to build your own, here are some good makes to look out for
abit or assus - motherboard
crosshiar (not sure of spelling) - memory
western digital - hard drive
nvidea - graphics card
samsung - monitor
creative - speakers
logitech - wireless keyboard and mouse

[Bluefish]

Cheer's guy's so it's 50/50 at the moment

[meeee]

Like all things they can go wrong, I have bought probably the best parts of 1000 Dell PC's and laptops over the years, and have had very few fail.
Personally I would not go down the build your own route, I have done it in the past but off the shelf PC's are so cheap it is hardly worth the effort.

Also what one person may say is great another would say is rubbish I read a lot of hardware reviews and in one it will say that western Digital HDD are better than Seagate and then in another it will be the reverse.

As I always say "you pays your Money you takes your chances"

Meeee

[millerkev]

get yasen down to comet,,sale will be awesome .. just dony exspect anywhere to take it back to if it does go tits up

[Skwoddy]

I did all those fixes in one go.

I bought a mac.

[womble]

Nov 2, 2012 18:34:35 GMT andy01424 said:

Now for some tips:
internet found that some are still using the old router and white filter this causes a few problems dump the filters and buy a BT Master NTE5,ther anything from £6 -£10,and dead easy to fit,they have built in filters,stopped all my internet drops

Hold on a mo, they might be easy for someone to fit who has a krone tool, or who understands basic telecoms wiring, but maybe not for others.
And I presume you are asking people to change their BT master socket (do people even understand it's only the master socket they need to change) and BT take a dim view of people doing that.

Also if you report drops to BT (or if you are with another BB supplier, to them, then they should get BT out eventually), they will change that anyway....especially if you mention it to them

Sometimes the wiring inside a master socket can be confusing, I wouldn't advise anyone to have a go if they are not confident they know what they are doing, you might end up with no phone line.

[Bluefish]

Yep, I'm defo thinking a shop bought lappy, looking forward to the comet mega sale where they knock ten quid off

[meeee]

Nov 2, 2012 23:12:46 GMT Bluefish said:

Yep, I'm defo thinking a shop bought lappy, looking forward to the comet mega sale where they knock ten quid off

Or you could hang on till the Jan Sales. Also if you buy a Dell quite often you can haggle with them. I buy lots for work so it may be different buy I always look at the list price and expect to get at least 20% off of it.

[meeee]

Nov 2, 2012 22:51:36 GMT womble said:

Nov 2, 2012 18:34:35 GMT andy01424 said:

Now for some tips:
internet found that some are still using the old router and white filter this causes a few problems dump the filters and buy a BT Master NTE5,ther anything from £6 -£10,and dead easy to fit,they have built in filters,stopped all my internet drops

Hold on a mo, they might be easy for someone to fit who has a krone tool, or who understands basic telecoms wiring, but maybe not for others.
And I presume you are asking people to change their BT master socket (do people even understand it's only the master socket they need to change) and BT take a dim view of people doing that.

Also if you report drops to BT (or if you are with another BB supplier, to them, then they should get BT out eventually), they will change that anyway....especially if you mention it to them

Sometimes the wiring inside a master socket can be confusing, I wouldn't advise anyone to have a go if they are not confident they know what they are doing, you might end up with no phone line.

To be fair some of the newer BT master sockets allow you to remove the bottom part of the face plate and switch it for a filtered faceplate without having to recrone any wires. (if you do not have any extensions of the master socket).

The main advantage they have is the filtering of the ring wire which can act as an aerial and pick up noise.

However as you say I suspect BT will not be overly happy with you changing it yourself.

Meee

[alvoram]

womble on certains sockets, note not all!!! bt supply something they call the 'broadband booster' or similar, I believe it is a kind of plug and play interference filter... that's why they only work on certain sockets, the newer type with the horizontally split front plate. They're only actually useful if you have internal wiring, if you plug your router directly into a dsl filter connected to the main socket there is no need. Not sure if this is what he means or not, and cant check as I'm on phone.

as for the advice, I disagree with 2 things here, firstly no anti virus is terrible advice to give to 99% of users. how do you know you've only had 2 trojans with nothing to detect the most hidden of threats, you mean you've only had 2 trojans that have had a noticably negative effect surely? I apologise if I'm wrong, however with most users not knowing how to detect and remove a virus themselves, I stand by the fact that most people should have antivirus...

secondly custom built computers are usually loads better than production line computers, in my experience its the big brands that use inferior cheap parts and inflate system prices for maximum profit, plus they tend to add lots of useless bloatware that the average user doesn't know how to remove, and has no use for.



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