PC Support

Reboot Your Computer

Often this is all that's required to get something up and running and is the first thing to try.

Safe Mode

Often just bringing the computer up in Safe Mode then restarting will solve problems. To do this:

• Either restart or power up the PC and press F8 many times until the selection menu appears
• select Safe Mode

If the computer goes past this too quickly:

• install a NON system floppy and power up the PC
• When the PC asks for a system disk, remove the floppy and press Enter
• select Safe Mode

In safe mode all the start up programs are not run and on my laptop the mouse does not work, only the touch pad.
For a simple fix just wait for the disk drive to stop working and restart.

Uninstall & Reinstall Software

If you have the source software (and you also may need the operating system CD) you can:

• START
• SETTINGS
• CONTROL PANEL
• Add/Remove Programs
• Select the software from the list and click Add/Remove

You should restart your computer after this to clean up the registry.

WIN98SE Reinstall

My CD-ROM was not working for audio/video applications and  the gifs on web pages were smearing.  The tests in MyComputer/Properties/DeviceManager for the video display passed.  Both of these problems were fixed by reinstalling WIN98SE simply by installing the CD and doing a fresh install.

Bonus fro the WIN98 reinstall.  My monitor power save mode stopped a long time ago and no matter what setings I used it would not go into power saver mode.  But after the reinstall of WIN98 it's working again.  But some gifs are still smearing.

System Resources

Just after powering up (or restarting) your computer (before you run any programs), check your system resources:

• <right click>My Computer
• select properties from the list
• click the performance tab at the top
• read the system resources percentage

85% or more is excellent
less than 80% may cause you problems
To improve this see MSCONFIG - Startup below

MSCONFIG - Startup

Here is where you can control what software is started during boot up.  This software can usually be started later and may not need to be started during boot.  Only two files MUST be in startup: System Tray and ScanRegistry.
• START
• RUN
• MSCONFIG
• OK
• select <click> on the Startup tab on the top.
• you can either unselect everything except for System Tray and ScanRegistry. or unselect those programs you know you do not use.  You can get a clue about what these are from looking at the path were they are saved.  Often the product name will be part of the path.
You will need to restart your computer after APPLY then OK.

More on msconfig & startup -Rick's Web Page - Clean Up Your Computer -

Task Manager

When you press <Control><Alternate><Delete> the task manager window will open showing you all the currently running tasks.
You can delete all except Explorer and Systray (for a WIN98 operating system).
If you look at the task manager just after booting (and cleaning up the Startup system) you should only see those tasks you enabled.
Note that when you run any applications they may launch more tasks and many not close them when the application closes.
I notice that when my browser launches Adobe Acrobat and I later have closed the pdf document, Acrobat is still a running task.
I can select in in the task manager and "end task" to shut it down.

Device Manager

If you are having a problem with some device, either inside your computer or external to the computer DEvice Manager will be of help in determining the problem.

• Get into Safe Mode
• <right click>My Computer
• select properties from the list
• select the Device Manager tab on the top
• There are many folders with a "+" to the left of each,

open each one in turn and look for a "?" or "!" in yellow or "unknown..something"
• If you find and of the above problems:
• click once to highlight the item
• click Remove
• If you are having a problem with something like the modem
• open the modem folder and remove all of the listed items

Once this is done restart your computer and during the boot process the computer will add the software back for each of the items.
Sometimes you may need to supply the wizard with a CD or floppy, but usually the PC can find the existing drivers.

You can also select an item and look at it's properties to see if the PC thinks it's working properly.

Device Drivers

There are programs called drivers that the PC needs for each piece of hardware, both inside the PC and on the outside.
Frequently the manufacturer has newer drivers than what you get when you open the box that your new device came in.
It's a very good idea to go to the manufacturer's web site and compare the revision number of your driver with the one on their web page and update if there is a newer version.

Netscape Tips

• 16 bit color maximum
• keep the Messinger inbox empty or only with a small amount of stuff in it
• don't use the smart update, instead use the fpt site: ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/english/

Problem: Composer forgets the URL if a Publish (up load) is canceled.
Solution to this and probably many other Netscape problems:

I recommend that you delete this profile's cache, cookies, and history.
1) Close Netscape
2) Open C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users
3) Open the profile folder that is having the problem
4) Delete the Cache folder, cookies.txt, and netscape.hst
5) Close the window and restart Netscape

If problem still persists
Use the User Profile Manager under Start - Programs - Netscape Communicator - Utilities to create a new profile. The new profile will have it's own set of data such as bookmarks and email settings.  Creating a new profile may resolve many issues encountered with Netscape.

Windows 98 Default File Dialog Sort Order

For reasons that are a mystery (maybe related to forced shut downs) the default file dialog sort order may change from the standard name order to some other order like in my case date order.  It's a real PITA (Pain In The ...) when this happens.

The fix is:
Right-click START, click Explore, and then click drive C.

On the View menu, click Details.

Click the Name column to sort items by name, press and hold down the CTRL key, and then quit Explorer by clicking Close in the upper-right corner of the screen (Do not use any other method of closing.).  Release the CTRL key.

Restart your computer.

Note that this method might be able to be used to change the default order to other sore orders?

Defrag

I have seen computers that were never defragmented for many years and the complaint was that the computer was very slow.  Others have said that you should defrag once a week.  Maybe once every month or two, but it probably depends on how much disk access you are doing.

It turns out that some of the tasks shown on in the system tray next to the clock are not easy to shut down and bring back.  If you have any task running that writes to the disk it will either slow defrag way down or stop it.  Therefore when I run Start\Programs\Accessories\System Tools\Disk Defragmentor  I put my computer into Safe Mode (see above) first.

I've have a lot of grief with defraging my desktop computer.  Probably because the Starband software is constantly talking to the disk.  A way around the problem is to defrag the backup D: drive and copy that using Symantec/Norton Ghost back to the C: drive.  This works well.  Note that Ghost (DOS version anyway) does NOT copy the entire drive, only where there is data, and compacts out any unused sectors so the time for Ghost to copy a drive depends on the amount of data on the drive, NOT on the capacity of the drive.

Windows\Temp

Many programs use this folder to store data that is required for their operation.  Most never delete the file when they are done.  Once the Temp folder has a lot of garbage in it, it can slow down or crash some applications.  Every now and then you need to erase everything in this folder.

I made a new folder called Temp_DL that I only use when downloading large files that I may want to keep.

Static & Chairs

Adobe Acrobat Standard Causes Windows XP to Freeze at Windows Boot

Backup WIN XP

• At this point there should be disks in the CD and Floppy drives.
• Power on and boot into DOS and run Ghost to do a Disk to Disk copy. Pay attention to which is the source and which is the destination disk.  That's easy if the two drives are different sizes.  For example cloning my three year old 160 GB C: drive to a new 500 GB drive made it very clear which was the source drive.  When Ghost finished, do not exit, but instead power down and pull the C: drive as a known good backup and install the new drive as the primary master drive (C:). 
  

This is very easy if disk drawers are used.
these are Star Tech.com drawers and are the best of the three different brands I've used.
The top cover is held by a spring latch so can be removed without any tools.
The drive mounts on a plate that has spring isolation from the frame protecting the drive from some abuse.
The power connector and the interface connector are on short cables NOT mounted rigidly to the frame.  This not only makes it easy to install or remove a drive from the drawer but more importantly makes for a more reliable connection.  The prior drive drawers had a rigid connection and the strain between the mounting screws and the strain on the connector caused intermittent operation also known as hard drive crashes or blue screen of death.  It took a long time and some expense to find the cause.  Those drives went into the round file.

The LEDs appear to all be on, but that's just a reflection of the flash.  If you look closely you can see the right power on green LED is much brighter on the top drive.  The top drive is active (switch on) and the bottom drive is inactive (switch off).








WIN XP will start and find new hardware and so yo will need to reboot.  But once that's done your'e running on your new disk and have the old C: in storage as a known good backup.

Backup Philosophy

Computer Rings like a Telephone

Noisy Fan on Motherboard

Dust

CD-ROM Burning locks Computer

01866 hits since This is the  time this page has been accessed since 30 Nov. 2000.