Over the years, we have learned many of our
most useful PC care and Windows troubleshooting tips from daily experience with the customer. Below are some
of those that we consistently come across and will save you many headaches.
If, after reading the tips, you have additional questions, please contact us at
support@EnterprisePCServices.com and we'll gladly provide
any additional clarifications. If you don't have the time or the desire to
perform these recommendations, please consider the
Flat Rate Annual
Labor Maintenance Plans offered by
Enterprise
PC Services.
We will do all this and much more for you on a
regular basis.
AntiVirus software is one of the most important applications on your computer. But sometimes it can cause problems that create many headaches for you and your computer. Often, in its aggressiveness to protect your computer, AntiVirus software can lock horns with some application installation programs (this happens often with Game applications) and prevent them from installing at all or, worse of all, can prevent a complete, uncorrupted installation. In this case, the installation will appear to have completed successfully, but when you try to run it, either it won't run, won't function correctly or will cause other system instabilities. To prevent these and ensure you get a complete and uncorrupted installation of new applications, always temporarily disable your AntiVirus software BEFORE starting the installation.
This can usually be accomplished by right-clicking on the AntiVirus icon in
the TaskBar, 
in the lower right of your
desktop, and select the disable entry (see below).
Once this is done,
proceed with your installation. When installation is complete, the most
reliable course of action is to restart (reboot) Windows. This will ensure
that all newly installed software is properly registered and recognized by
Windows. Usually upon rebooting, your AntiVirus software will restart,
fully enabled and protecting your computer.
SOME CAVEATS: - Don't disable the AntiVirus software until you have scanned the installation program for viruses. This is particularly important if the software being installed has been downloaded from the internet. This requires an extra step before the installation, but better safe than sorry.
Yes this sounds like your mother preaching to you, but this is a real problem with computers, particularly desktops and towers, less so with laptops. The problem is that electronics don't like build-ups of dust and dirt. The dust and dirt inhibits the proper cooling of the electronics and contributes to early failures of the computer's electronics and floppy and CD/DVD/Removable disk drives. If you've had your computer for a while, you'll be amazed at how much dust and dirt gets sucked into it - especially if it is sitting on the floor under your desk, where dust bunnies live. Most of it is sucked in thru the case and power supply cooling fans.
So, what do you do? Every 3 months, unplug the computer, take it outside the house or office, open the case of your computer and use a can of compressed air, suitable for electronics that won't cause a static electrical charge buildup (available at Radio Shack, Staples, Office Depot, CompUSA, etc), to thoroughly blow out all the dust, dirt and cob webs (and spiders or other dead critters).
DOs:
 | Pay special attention to blowing out the entrances (air ducts) to the case fan (often located at the bottom, front of the case) and the power supply fan (at the back of the case). Ensure you blow off the fan blades sufficiently to remove built-up dirt. |
| Do open the doors on your floppy disk drive, CD/DVD/ZIP/other removable disk drive and blow them out thoroughly. You'd be amazed at how often these drives won't reliably (if at all) read their media because a dust bunny is rattling around inside. Plus the dust can actually scratch the media and damage the read/write heads of the drive. |
| For laptops, use the compressed air to blow out any dust/dirt around and under the keyboard. Same goes for any floppy, CD/DVD/etc drives as noted above. |
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<--- Here's one of my favorite examples of dust buildup. Note the dust clogging the intake vents of the case, and the dust hanging out of the floppy drive at the top. :)
DO NOTs:
| Do NOT wipe the insides or any of the electronic cards with tissues, wet wipes, cloths or anything. Use only the compressed air suitable for electronics! Wiping the electronics can allow High Voltage static discharge from your body that will damage the electronic components. |
| Do NOT use a vacuum cleaner to either suck out the dirt/dust or to blow air into the system. The air from the vacuum can cause High Voltage static electrical charge buildup on the vacuum hose & attachments. If you accidentally touch any of the electronic components inside the computer, the static discharge can destroy them. |
| Do NOT use Windex or other ammonia based glass cleaner on your monitor or laptop screen. These can seriously harm the coating on the monitor screen. Best bet is to get some pre-packaged wipes especially made for monitors and laptop screens. These are available at Radio Shack, Office Depot, Staples, CompUSA, etc. |
Your AntiVirus software is a very important part of the protection and continued well-being of your system. But since there are new computer viruses discovered almost daily, your AntiVirus software is only as good as the most recent virus definition update it is using. If you have not updated the virus definitions in a few weeks or months, don't be surprised when you get a virus, even when you have the AntiVirus software running. If it doesn't now to look for the latest viruses, it usually can't detect them.
DOs:
| If you don't have AntiVirus software, do get some and install it
immediately. You are taking a great risk with your valuable system and
software by not having it protected from viruses. There are many
products available. The top retail products are
Norton AntiVirus and
McAfee VirusScan . Our
preference is Norton AntiVirus due to the ease of installation, setup,
automated updates and overall reliability and compatibility with Windows
systems. Check out this
review by PC
Magazine of 10 AntiVirus products. |
| Download the latest virus definitions weekly. Here are some links to some of the popular products available today: |
- Norton AntiVirus - McAfee VirusScan - PC-cillin - Panda AntiVirus
| Do use your AntiVirus software to automatically scan all incoming and
outgoing email and all internet downloads. Schedule your software to
automatically do a complete system scan at least weekly. If you don't
set up an automatic schedule, at least start a scan manually on a weekly
basis. |
| Need a quick free virus scan? Try
Trend Micros' Housecall or
Panda ActiveScan |
| Need a virus removal tool for a specific virus? Try this link: - Norton Virus Removal Tools |
DO NOT:
| Do NOT perpetuate virus HOAXES. There are many virus hoaxes being distributed via email and asking that you forward the information on to your friends and associates. All this accomplishes is filling people's email InBoxes with worth email and wasting their time. If you aren't sure whether it is a hoax or real, take the time to check it out before forwarding it to anyone - check out the links below. If it turns out to be a hoax, REPLY to ALL addresses in the email that it is a hoax and give them a link showing that this is the case. This will hopefully stop them from further perpetuating the hoax across the internet. |
-
Panda Virus Hoax Search
- Norton
Virus Hoax Search (enter the word Hoax in the search box)
- McAfee Hoax Library
Why is this important? Because your Windows operating system, your application software and probably most of your personal and business documents, many of which might be one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable, reside on your hard drive. So if you have not backed up your data and your hard drive fails, you have a big problem.
So a little TLC and preventative maintenance is in order. This can keep it in top working order, can help identify and fix small problems before they become larger, irreversible ones and can improve the overall performance of your system. If you want more details as to how this helps, please email support@EnterprisePCServices.com and we'll be glad to provide a more complete explanation.
DOs:
| Do perform a disk cleanup, getting rid of old files in the recycle bin, old Temporary Internet files, old Offline Web pages, old Temporary files, etc. You can accomplish this several ways, but the recommended way is to use the Disk Cleanup utility in Windows. Step 1: Double-click on your My Computer icon on the desktop to open a window showing all your disk drives. Step 2: Next right-click on your C: hard drive, highlight and click on Properties (see below). Step 3: Click on Disk Clean and let the system survey what can be safely deleted. You can make your selections of what you want deleted at this point, but choose Recycle Bin, Temporary Internet Files, Offline Web Pages and Temporary Files as a minimum (see below). Then click the OK button and let Windows perform the cleanup. Repeat for all your hard drives. |
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
| Do perform a disk scan to check your files for proper functioning within the storage parameters of your hard drive. You can do this with built-in Windows utilities or with third party utilities, such as Norton Disk Doctor (see examples below). In either case, accept any recommendations to correct any problems found. |
Windows Disk Error-Checking Utility
Norton Disk Doctor Utility (not applicable to Windows XP)
| AFTER you have done all the tasks above, Defragment your hard drive at least monthly, more often if you are a daily user of your system. This improves system performance by cutting down on the time required by Windows to search the drive for all the pieces of your applications and documents on your hard drive. Instead of being scattered all over the drive in hundreds of small pieces, defragmenting puts all the pieces together in one place on the drive. So if it doesn't have to search all over the drive, it can get the data and use it where required much faster. Again, you can accomplish this using the built-in Windows utility or a third party utility such as Norton Speed Disk (Windows 9x/Me) or Diskeeper (Windows NT/2000/XP). See examples below. |
Windows Disk Defragmentation Utility
Norton Speed Disk Utility
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Diskeeper Utility
DO NOT:
| Do NOT wait until things have gotten really bad to do all this. Establish a regular schedule based on your usage and take care of these PC housekeeping chores. A little preventative maintenance is always preferable to crisis maintenance or worse - EXPENSIVE PROFESSIONAL REPAIRS. |
You are probably already aware that computer electronics are very susceptible to damage from power surges. So how do you protect your system from power surges?
First, understand that anywhere power has a path into your computer you have
a potential problem. It is not enough to protect just the power directly
into your computer. You must also protect the power path for any
peripherals attached to your computer, such as printers, scanners, external disk
drives, USB hubs, external sound systems/speakers, network hubs/routers
(including Cable/DSL modems). external modems, etc, etc.
- Hint: One area many people
don't consider, which is a direct path directly into your computer, is the
telephone line connected to your modem. If you get a lightning strike in
your community, it can causes power surges through both power AND telephone
lines. So you have to protect both.
Do:
| So the preventative measure here is to plug ALL your computer system power cords and any modem telephone lines or cable modem input lines or network cables into a good, computer grade surge protector. There are many very good brands of multi-input surge protectors available at most any consumer electronics store. Pay a little more for a surge protector that has all the types of protection you need, instead of buying a cheaper model that only protects power cord outputs. |
Do NOT :
| Do NOT confuse surge protection with uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). A UPS provides spare (battery-supplied) power for a short period of time when the power sags below normal 120V levels, flickers or goes out completely. This temporary power should generally allow you enough time to properly shut down your computer system without loosing any of your work. Almost every UPS provides surge protection as well. So if you are in an area that has frequent brown-outs or if the work you do on your system is critical to your personal or business success, get a UPS for your system. A UPS costs considerably more than a surge protector, but it is well worth the extra cost the first time you stand to loose those 5 hours of work on that crucial document that you forgot to save as you were working on it. |
Protect Your Data - Backup - Backup - Backup !!!
OK, we are preaching to you again, but only because it is so important to protect your data. If you have a catastrophic event in your computer, like a lightning strike, a power surge or your hard disk just wearing out ("crashing") you can usually find the application CDs or the Windows CD to reinstall these on a new hard drive or computer. But all those documents you use on a daily basis such as financial files, word processing and spreadsheet files, etc, which are often one-of-a-kind and upon which you are dependent for your personal or business success, may be lost forever if you have not made backup copies.
There are many methods for backing up your data. The best method is
determined by a combination of what you are comfortable doing, the amount of
data you need to backup and how often you need to backup. While it is not
always an easy answer, ANY METHOD is better than NONE.
So don't wait for the perfect answer or a disaster to start backing up your
data. Start today!!!
Back it up to whatever you have available - floppy, Zip disk, recordable CD,
whatever. A simple copy of the data to your media is sufficient for
starters; no fancy backup software is needed. You can implement a
specialized backup application to make things easier once you have evaluated
your needs. If all this sounds daunting, don't get too concerned.
Just use common sense to make copies of your most important files. And if
you need assistance to select, install and setup a regular backup routine,
including hardware and software, remember you can always call us at
Enterprise
PC Services at
(703) 472-1232 or email us at
support@EnterprisePCServices.com and we'll be glad to assist you.
But in the meantime - Backup - Backup -
Backup !!!
Speed Up Your Windows XP System Boot Time
Remember the first time you booted your new Windows XP system and how quickly it started up? If your Windows XP system seems to be taking forever to boot up to a stable state now, then you need to use a little known Microsoft utility to return things to normal. The BootVis utility monitors all aspects of your system startup, then makes modifications to the startup file sequence and locations on disk so that everything goes much smoother and more quickly. It is all automated and is well worth the time to download, install and run. Read more about it at Microsoft's site: Fast Boot/Fast Resume Design . Do it today and start using your Windows XP system as quickly as the day you first got it.