Monday, 15 September 2008

3 Finger Salute

3 Finger Salute in Windows XP
By: Scott Hendison

In Windows XP, hitting CTRL–ALT-DEL brings up a window similar to the one in Windows 98, but it is much more functional now. It’s called the “Task Manager” and for good reason. From here, you can usually figure out what’s slowing down your computer.
Upon opening it with the 3 finger salute, you’ll see five tabs to choose from. These tabs are Applications, Processes, Performance, Networking and Users. This article deals with the Applications and Processes tabs. :(
The first tab; Applications; is similar to Windows 98. It shows a list of software that is open, and if anything is not responding, you can highlight it, and choose to “end task”. :)
This area is limited to software that you’ve opened.
The next tab; Processes; is the important tab. From here, you’ll see every process that is running at any given time, as well as how it started, and how much memory it is using.:$
While in the Processes tab, you can see four columns, Image name, User name, CPU and Mem usage. Clicking on any of these names will sort the information by that column in ascending or descending order.
The image name column just shows the name of the application or file that is running.
:y - - - - - - :# - - - - -;)

When looking at the names of all these processes most people will not recognize what is running. Names like lsass.exe and svchost.exe are cryptic to even the most seasoned computer user. If you care, go look it up on http://www.google.com, which will probably take you here http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/
The “user name” column shows the name of user that has started the process. These user names will usually be either “system”, “service”, or the actual name of a user. The ones showing your name came from programs that you’ve knowingly (or unknowingly) installed, whereas the others are usually just a part of Windows.
The CPU column shows how much of a load these programs are putting on your CPU at that time. Usually though, this load is minimal, and this column will usually just show all zeros.
The last column though is the money column. This is where you can find the offending culprit that is dragging down your performance. Look at the “mem usage” column. By sorting this way, you can see which of these programs are taking up the most memory on your system.
If my computer is being sluggish, I go to the processes tab, and sort by mem usage.
At a glance, I can see which offending application is sucking up all of my memory and slowing me to a crawl. Usually, at bootup with nothing open, only explorer.exe and svchost.exe should taking up much memory, at about 15,000k each. Everything else is pretty minor. Therefore, if a program is showing as taking up 25,000k, 45,000k, or even over 100,000k of memory, I can highlight it, and choose “end process” generally returning my computer to a more useable state.
If one of these processes appears that I don’t recognize, I make it a point to look it up and see what it is, then I am able to better control what is happening on my computer, making sure it is a process that came with Windows. Usually, it turns out to be spyware from a “free” download somewhere.
The Task Manager will help you manage the operation of your computer, and keep it running much faster. I guarantee it.
Scott Hendison

Tuesday, 9 September 2008

The Control Panel and then some...

The Control Panel and then some...

I assume that you've played around in your windows "Control Panel." It's one of the first places I went before I had much software. ("Start" - "Settings" - "Control Panel" or access it from "My Computer"). If you haven't been there, go play for a while, and then come back. It's safe, really. Just remember, if you're unsure about something, just "Cancel." As long as you don't click "Apply" or "Okay" your changes won't have a permanent effect.
You may have a lot of fun in the "Display" area. That's where you can change your screen saver, your color schemes, your desktop wallpaper, your screen area size (or resolution), and lots of other things too. Nearly every computer that comes in has the same default windows settings. Change it around. Live a little. If you happen to choose a screen area (resolution) setting that makes your screen go black, don't panic. Just don't press any keys, and your monitor will return to its original setting within 10 to 20 seconds. All that means is that your monitor cannot handle that high of resolution setting. Many older monitors won't go above a setting of 800 x 600.One area in your "Control Panel" that you may have left unexplored is your "Device Manager." This is the master hardware control center for your entire computer. From the "Control Panel", go to "System" then to the "Device Manager" tab. This is where you can immediately spot a problem if one exists.
:)- - - - :x- - - - - -:o - - - -

First, you'll see all of your devices listed there, from your CD Rom, to your USB (If you have Universal Serial Bus ports). There should be NO yellow circles with exclamation points inside them. If you have any of these, it means something is wrong. Usually, a driver (software for your hardware) is missing or incorrectly installed. Sometimes, even though the driver is correctly installed, there may be a conflict with another one of your devices. When Windows first installs hardware, it's called "Plug and Play." But Windows doesn't always do it properly, hence the technical term "plug and pray." When something doesn't work right, whether it's your CD drive, your sound, your modem, or anything else, the "Device Manager" is always the first place you should look.

By clicking on the individual device, you can expand the tree to show you your specific device. If you don't know what kind of modem or video card you have, click the "modem" or "display adapters" icon and there you'll see it listed. Please though, unless you know what you're doing (and if you did you probably wouldn't be reading this) don't make any changes in your device manager.
With only 500 or so words allocated to me each month, I can't really tell you how to do very much in there, but I encourage you to go look anyway. By being well informed about your computer, what's inside it, and what's wrong with it, you can more easily get your support questions answered, and you're less likely to get taken advantage of in a repair or upgrade situation.
Another great area of fun in your control panel is the "Mouse." Change your cursor to an hourglass, then sit back and howl as your family hits the "reset" button and reboots the computer over and over only to have the hourglass never go away! It's not good for your computer, but it sure is funny!
By: Scott Hendison

Clean Your Desktop

Clean your desktop

Look at your computer screen. How can you find anything in that mess? Aren’t all those shortcuts on your desktop confusing? How is the rest of your family supposed to use that thing? Don’t you wish is could be simpler? This month I’ll give you a quick and easy solution that will have your desktop looking like you just moved in.
Let me start by saying that Windows actually has a built in feature to add different users.
Each user can have his or her own desktop, wallpaper, shortcuts, start menu, etc. This feature though, involves logging off and signing on again every time someone else wants to use it, and that’s too cumbersome for my tastes. I find my solution a little simpler.
Find and empty spot (if you can!) on your Windows desktop. Now right click and select New – Folder. Notice that you now have a new folder on your desktop, the name of which is “new folder”, highlighted in blue. Just by typing here, you can rename that folder to be called whatever you want. Let’s type in “Games” and press enter. (To rename a folder once it’s already there and named, just right click and select “rename”)

Now you have an empty folder on your desktop. You can place all the game shortcuts on your desktop into that one folder a couple of ways, but the easiest is to click and drag. Just left click on a game icon, hold, and drag it into the folder. Once you let go, it’s moved. You can even select multiple shortcuts to move into this folder. All you do is hold down the Ctrl key while you left click to select as many icons as you choose. You can use this Ctrl key whenever you want to select multiple anything. Once they’re selected and highlighted, just drag them into the folder. That’s it.
By clicking and dragging shortcuts into folders, they will disappear from your desktop and be moved to the folder. If you want to have the same shortcut in more than one place, that’s easy. Just create a second shortcut before you move it. Please note that if you try to move an item that is actually a program, and not a shortcut, Windows will create a shortcut in that folder to the program you’ve chosen, leaving the original in place. A few things just have to stay on the desktop, and there is no real easy way to delete them.
You can have as many or as few folders on your desktop as you like, and organize them however you want. You can have one folder called “Kids” and have all of their games, programs etc. in one place. You can do this for each member of the family, giving each user their own folder that they can customize however they want.
To customize a folder, try this… Open one of the new folders, like “Games”. Go to the VIEW pull down menu at the top of your screen, and select “customize this folder”.
Then select the middle dot that says, “choose a background picture” and hit the “next” button. From here, you can pick a color for the background (instead of boring white), or change the color of the text for the icon titles, or even pick some special background art to use as wallpaper in that folder. By doing this, each user can have their own desktop folder to organize and use as they see fit, making your desktop as neat and clean as the day you got your computer.
By: Scott Hendison

Tuesday, 2 September 2008

Speed Up Your Internet Connection

How to Maximize the Speed of Your Internet Connection

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

This article describes how to speed up your Internet connection without use of web accelerators, and is geared towards Windows and Internet Explorer.

Steps

Do some basic maintenance on your PC. Run Disk Defrag, a scan disk, a virus scan, a malware scan, and clear your recycle bin. An unusually slow Internet connection experience is often the only sign that your computer is infected with viruses or other malware. Delete old files and temporary files. Never allow the free space on your C: drive to be less than 10% of the total size or twice the installed RAM (which ever is larger).

A well maintained PC will operate much better than a PC that has never had any maintenance. Google or your local computer repair store should be able to help you with this if you don't know how.
Reset Your Home Network. Sometimes restarting your home network if you have one will drastically increase the speed of your connection.
Optimize your cache or temporary Internet files. These files improve your Internet connection performance by not downloading the same file over and over. When a web site puts their logo graphic on every page your computer only downloads it when it changes. If you delete the temporary files it must be downloaded again.
if you disable the cache, it must be downloaded every time you view a page that uses it. This can be done by opening Internet Explorer, clicking on "Tools" at the top and choosing "Internet Options". On the General tab, click the "Settings" button next to Temporary Internet Files. Set Check for newer versions to "Automatically". Set amount of disk space to use to 2% of your total disk size or 512 MB, which ever is smaller. On Firefox, click "Tools" then "Options," and go to the privacy tab. Then click on the Cache tab within this.
Never bypass your router. Most routers include a firewall that is very difficult for hackers to defeat. If you don't need to use Wireless then hook your computer directly to your router. Routers will only slow down your connection by a few Milli-seconds. You won't notice the difference but the hackers will.
If you are using a Wireless router, make sure it doesn't conflict with a cordless phone or wireless camera. Wireless routers come in two varieties; 802.11bg (2.4Ghz) or 802.11a (5.8Ghz) If you are using a 2.4Ghz Cordless phone and 2.4Ghz Wireless router then your Internet connection speed will slow while you use the cordless phone. The same is true of wireless security cameras. Check on your phone and camera, if it's 900Mhz then it's fine. If it says 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz then it could be the cause of your slow connection speed while they're in use.
Call your Internet service provider (ISP). Sometimes you just have bad service. They can usually tell if your connection is substandard without having a technician come to your home. Just be nice and ask.
Upgrade your computer. If your computer is slow, it doesn't matter how fast your Internet connection is, the whole thing will just seem slow. You can only access the Internet as fast as your PC will allow you to.
Replace your old cable modem. Any solid-state electronics will degrade over time due to accumulated heat damage. Your broadband modem will have a harder and harder time 'concentrating' on maintaining a good connection as it gets older (signal to noise ratios will go down, and the number of resend requests for the same packet will go up). An after-market cable modem as opposed to a cable-company modem will frequently offer a better connection.
Often your connection speed is slow because other programs are using it. To test if other programs are accessing the Internet without your knowing, Click Start, Click Run. Type "cmd" (without quotes). Type "netstat -b 5 > activity.txt". After a minute or so, hold down Ctrl and press C. This has created a file with a list of all programs using your Internet connection. Type activity.txt to open the file and view the program list. Ctrl Alt Delete and open up the Task Manager. Go to the process menu and delete those processes that are stealing your valuable bandwidth. (NOTE: Deleting processes may cause certain programs to not function properly)
After you have tried all this try your connection again and see if it's running any faster.

Tips

Call your ISP and have them verify all of your TCP/IP settings if you are concerned. Ask them to verify that your Proxy settings are correct.
Don't expect dial up or high speed lite service to be fast. The Internet is primarily geared towards Broadband Connections. Sometimes, you have to wait a little.
Download programs that make browsing faster:
- Loband.org is a browser inside of a browser that loads web pages without the images.
- Opera is a good Internet browser for slower speeds. You can set an option to not load images.
- If you are using Internet Explorer or Firefox, try downloading Google Web Accelerator. It is meant to speed up broadband connections, but it can also slow your Internet connection. Try enabling it and disabling it and see when your Internet connection runs faster.
- If you are using Firefox, download the Fasterfox extension and Firetune.
- Reduce the amount of programs running that use your Internet connection (Instant Messengers, RSS Feeders, and MS Applications set to send Internet data)
- Google Accessible Is designed to search pages in order of how clean they are of junk. This will bring up pages that are usually not only easy to read, but are quick to load.
Upgrade your RAM. This will not only improve your regular computer use, but it will affect the speed of your Internet connection because your computer works faster.
Use the Stop button to stop loading pages once you've gotten what you want.
Some times malware on your computer can eat up your bandwidth. Make sure you have an up-to-date malware protection program.

Warnings

Viruses and malware can often use up your bandwidth and slow down your Internet connection. Make sure you have protection against this. Many ISP's will provide software for this. Make sure your anti-virus and malware scanners are up-to-date.
Bypassing the router will leave you more vulnerable to attacks because you no longer have the built-in firewall from your router protecting you.
Watch out for scams that claim to make your Internet go a lot faster for free. They may tell you to download their program, which usually has a lot of other hidden programs attached that might steal your identity.

Related wikiHows

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Maximize the Speed of Your Internet Connection. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Monday, 1 September 2008

How to Speed Up Your Computer - Free Up Disk Space
By Brooks Carver

If you want to speed up your computer you have to free up disk space, you can improve the performance of your computer quite a bit by doing this. Windows comes with a disk cleanup tool that helps you free up space on your hard disk. The utility identifies files that you can safely delete without messing anything up, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files. This is a necessary step when looking to speed up your computer.
Use Disk Cleanup to....
* Remove temporary Internet files.
* Remove downloaded program files (such as Microsoft ActiveX controls and Java applets).
* Empty the Recycle Bin.
* Remove Windows temporary files.
* Remove optional Windows components that you don't use.
* Remove installed programs that you no longer use.
Typically, temporary Internet files take the most amount of space because the browser caches each page you visit for faster access later.
To use Disk Cleanup
1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools,
and then click Disk Cleanup. If several drives are available, you might be
prompted to specify which drive you want to clean.
Disk Cleanup calculates the amount of space you will be able to free.
2. In the Disk Cleanup for dialog box, scroll through the content of the Files to
delete list. (If you have multiple hard drives you will have to select which one
to scan.)Choose the files that you want to delete.

3. Clear the check boxes for files that you don't want to delete, and then click OK.
4. When prompted to confirm that you want to delete the specified files, click OK.
Be sure to do this if you want to speed up your computer speed!
My personal website is an absolute must see if you are looking to increase the speed of your computer. Go to how to speed up a computer now to learn my other ways to increase your computer speed. This site is complete with step by step instructions with videos and screen shots to help even the most novice computer users. My main site has other various computer how to types of tutorials and guides to help you with your computer. Go to my computer how to site now to get more information!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brooks_Carver