You may be operating under the impression, as a PC owner, that your marvelous machine will run forever as efficiently as fully as it did the day you first ride home from the store. PCs, however, just like automobiles, not only benefit from but require regular maintenance. If you’re like most of us PC users, you can’t imagine life without having your PC ready to go on a moment’s notice. The only way to ensure that will happen is with a regular schedule of maintenance.
The demands you place on your PC simply from using each day will eventually cause its performance to deteriorate. Surfing the web, using your word processor, and playing games on your PC will eventually have an effect on its efficiency. If you’d all take regular status to restore it, you will eventually begin experiencing serious problems like system freezes or crashes and permanent data loss. We’ve compiled a list of the eight
maintenance tasks which are absolute musts!
Scan for Viruses
Whenever you are surfing the web, you are leaving your PC open to infestation by potentially devastating viruses. If your PC should happen to be invested with a virus and you don’t remove it immediately, you may find your operating system damaged beyond repair, and your personal information at risk.
You need to install a good virus scanning software program and run it on a regular basis. Choose an program which is on a manically updated, because new viruses hit the Internet every single day!
Keep Your Windows OS Current
Make a point of checking the Microsoft site frequently for any patches or updates to your Windows OS. Microsoft regularly designs updates to protect the Windows OS from security threats and to keep Windows-based PCs operating at their best. If Microsoft issues an updated version of your operating system, install it.
Use a Firewall
No one should be in the habit of going on the Internet without a good firewall installed on his or her PC. Most antivirus software programs include firewalls. Regardless of where you get a firewall, however, keep it updated so that it will protect you against the latest efforts of hackers to penetrate your PC and steal your personal information.
Create Regular Data Backups
Nothing can be more devastating than to have lose the critical data stored on your computer. Even the best maintenance routine in the world is not an absolute guarantee that you’ll avoid a crash which
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Kay here with a look on how to get organized for the year and
explore your system with ease.
It’s engrained in us: the first thing one does when an app
freezes dead in its tracks is fire up the Windows Task Manager,
hitting End Task, misbehaving program no more. And if you want
to get an obscure idea of memory consumption for any given
process or its CPU usage, the Process tab can provide a cryptic
overview of this. Windows Task Manager does what it’s intended
to do and nothing more, a very vanilla and boring utility that
comes stock with Windows.
If you’re a Windows power user you’ll certainly crave more than
what the basic Task Manager features. Enter SystemExplorer, a
Task Manager utility on a caffeine spree. Windows’ stock Task
Manager does its intended job—Ctrl+Shift+ESC to pull it up—but
it doesn’t really give you much in the way of information
pertaining to your running applications, processes, and the
resources they consume. SystemExplorer goes a step farther in
extending Task Manager by offering more in-depth detail.
For instance, pinpointing the file location for any given
application or process is easy with SystemExplorer, and if this
weren’t enough, it’ll even throw in its publisher and a short
description of its purpose. If you’re tired of the sparseness
of Task Manager, give SystemExplorer a whirl.
Beyond Hyperlinks
It’s all too easy to infect your PC with a Trojan horse or a
slimy piece of spyware when downloading files from the web.
And I can’t count the number of times when I accidentally
selected a link pointing to a PDF file and having to wait for
the snail-paced PDF reader to load up, wasting my time and
wearing my patience threadbare. Firefox already has an
extension that allows you to get a thumbnail preview of a web
page without even having to tap on its link, but wouldn’t it be
fantastic if you could also do this with file downloads?
Link Alert, one of the many wonderful Firefox extensions, allows
you to mouse over any link that claims to point to a file
download. Link Alert supports 12 of the most popular file
extensions—exe, zip, doc, PDF, et al—allowing you to get a
preview of the file without even having to pull it to your hard
drive first. Mousing over a link that leads to a typical
webpage won’t produce anything, but hovering your mouse over a
link that points to a file that Link Alert recognizes will
materialize an icon, signifying what lurks on the other side of
that hyperlink; for example, a musical note will chime for
sound files, a film icon for videos, a machine cog for
programs, etc. Keep your PC clear from unwanted downloads with
Firefox’s Link Alert extension.
A Fresh Desktop Calendar
With the dizzying selection of desktop calendars to choose from,
organizing your daily life exactly the way you want can become
a cumbersome endeavor. A vast array of choices doesn’t
necessarily make for a happier user. If you need a desktop
calendar that offers all the essentials—alarm alerts, priority
scheduling, searching, etc.—then Rainlendar Lite might be just
what you’ve been searching for.
Not only does Rainlender Lite provide you everything a veritable
calendar app should, but it’s also amazingly customizable.
Everyone loves to customize their programs’ appearance;
Rainlendar Lite allows you to skin its GUI with hundreds of
skins to choose from. It even goes so far as to allow you to
skin the little tool tips that pop up with useful information!
Customizing your desktop calendar has not been this much fun or
easy until now.
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One of the most annoying things about today’s PCs and the
modern Windows operating system is that, every now and then, Windows has an
obnoxious tendency to freeze just as you were doing something important—like
saving a Word Document, or about to hit the Send button in your Thunderbird
email client. Every user who’s used their PC long enough has experienced this
frustrating annoyance. So, if this issue is inevitable, what should one do
when one is faced with an unresponsive, frozen PC? Let’s enumerate a few
remedies to resurrect a frozen system.
First off, make sure that your PC’s really frozen and not
just responding really slowly. Sometimes an application or a process running in
the background can hog all your CPU’s cycles, causing the appearance of being
stuck. Wait several minutes to see if your PC responds, as an application may
be saving a file, or an important service running in the background may be
performing a special CPU-intensive task. It’s important that when you first
realize that your PC may be frozen that you don’t panic and shut down your PC by
hitting the power button out of sheer frustration. The most important reason
for not doing this is that you may still have files that haven’t been saved to
disk, and you most certainly don’t want to lose any of your precious data.
If you believe your PC to be actually frozen solid, then
try the following tips below.
The Three Finger Salute
Every Windows user should become acquainted with the three
finger salute—pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del—which will display the Task Manager. If you
suspect a stuck PC, open up the Task Manager, clicking on the Applications tab.
Scan the items on the Applications tab and look for any programs that are listed
as “Not Responding”. If any program is flagged as unresponsive, selecting it
and clicking on End Task may fix the situation. After this, navigate on over to
the Processes Tab, and scan the list of processes, noting any process that’s
taking up an abnormal amount of CPU cycles. Hit “End Process” on any process
that’s taking 100% of your CPU’s time.
If you cannot find any suspects in the Applications or
Processes tab, select “Turn Off” from the “Shut Down” menu, allowing Windows to
shut down cleanly and properly. Chances are, nine times out of ten, when you
boot your system back up and everything’s cleared out of RAM, this operation
will rectify the problem.
Is your Mouse and Keyboard Responding?
Determine whether your PC is still communicating with your
mouse and keyboard. For your mouse, move it around the screen. If your mouse’s
pointer is stagnant, even after a few moments, then your mouse is down for now.
Hit the Caps Lock key on your keyboard and see whether it lights up; if it
doesn’t, your keyboard is out as well. Before doing a hardware reboot, check
if your mouse and keyboard are plugged in properly if they’re wired, or, for
wireless devices, change their batteries. You may also want to try a different
mouse or keyboard as a hardware test, if you have extra ones lying around
suitable for this purpose.
If all else fails, then your absolute last resort is a
hardware reboot. You’ll only want to do this when nothing else works, as any
work that you’ve neglected to save will be lost. To do a hardware reboot, press
and hold your PC’s power button until it shuts off.
When you boot up your PC again, you’ll experience a longer
boot time, for Windows performs various diagnostic tests whenever it isn’t
cleanly powered down properly.
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Install enough applications, utilities, shareware, and freeware and you may notice a hitch in your PC’s step during startup or even during runtime. During the many stages of your PC’s boot up process, various programs and services silently load themselves into the background, vying for your computer’s precious resources with other suchlike pieces of code.
The configuration utility, aptly named msconfig, that comes stock with Windows can display these services, but it’s not very intuitive or fun to use, not to mention simple to read. Autoruns, a freebie utility, can assist you in making sense of the cryptic format of msconfig, all within a friendly interface. A search function, not an option in msconfig, is also available to help you pinpoint specific processes.
Autoruns conveniently displays a list of all processes that load up at boot time, along with a listing of services that pertain to the Boot Execute, Drivers, and Schedule Tasks categories. Picking through these lists can uncover the dreg services that are not only unnecessary but are also a drag on your system. The names of services can be odd and don’t make a whole lot of sense more often than not; thankfully, Autoruns can perform a Google search on any service to demystify its purpose, allowing you to decide which services you want loaded and which you want removed. Give Autoruns a try; you’ll get a better grasp of what your PC is doing when it boots up, and its free, so you’ve nothing to lose.
Browsing History Thumbnails
It’s hard to know where in the tangled world of the web you’ll go next, and you’ll often find yourself wanting to retrace your steps, which is what your browser’s History list is for. It’s just too bad that long strings of URLs are what you’ll have to wade through when perusing your History. Visuals are always nice; they’re easier to grasp at an instant.
Firefox’s cool extension, ThumbStrips, takes thumb snapshots of recently surfed web pages. ThumbStrips quietly resides at the bottom of Firefox, allowing you to scroll through thumbnail images of pages past, a great deal easier than having to sift through obscure URL strings. Along with each page’s thumbnail, you’ll see the name of the website and a timestamp identifying your last visit to it; clicking on a thumbnail will whisk you away to its associated website. Thumb through your browsing history with this cool Firefox extension.
Chocolate Castle
Relax and kick back with this deliciously addictive game. This puzzler puts a sweet spin on the typical maze game; the object is to join, shift, and munch on chocolate to make your way through the cocoa labyrinth. There are four characters that can munch on pieces of chocolate that match their color, making way to your victory; but be careful and don’t squander them, as they vanish once they eat a piece of chocolate.
There are three modes of game play—Easy, Medium, and Hard. But the Hard mode is very challenging and extremely frustrating; if you’re like me, you’ll make extensive use of the Redo and Undo features. If you’re completely lost in the maze, you can seek help from the Chocolate Castle community. The game sports old-school but charming graphics and music, so the program doesn’t take up a lot of space or resources. Give the free 12 level demo a try; if you like it, the full version is $20 USD and gives you 120 puzzles to play around with.
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Microsoft certainly hyped up Vista before it was released to the masses. Unfortunately, it’s hard to push an OS when every tech writer is advising sticking with XP until Microsoft introduces Windows 7. But it’s difficult to find a new PC that isn’t already loaded with Vista; sure, some hardware vendors offer a downgrade to XP, but not all of them do, so most users just have to make do with Vista until something better comes along.
Luckily, more and more Vista downloads are becoming available, extending the operating system, granting it more abilities, more fun. Let’s go through several of today’s most popular Vista downloads.
Managing Vista with Vista Manager
For those of us that enjoy hacking and tweaking our operating systems to get the maximum efficiency and enjoyment out of it, a single GUI that houses all important settings and options is certainly a boon. Vista Manager to the rescue. Vista Manager affords users tons of configurations, settings, and options, all conveniently residing within a lone interface.
Settings to alter your Desktop configuration, tweak out your Start Menu, and calibrate your shortcuts, all live inside Vista Manger; no more searching for the setting you need inside the control panel; everything is conveniently organized and within quick reach should you need to change your system’s settings and configurations.
Is your PC lagging like lava? Vista Manager offers optimization enhancements to put that spring back into your PC’s step. System security can also be fortified with this useful utility, as well as various ways to adjust and tweak out Internet Explorer. If you’re a configuration altering aficionado, then give this Vista utility a spin.
Start++: Start Menu Plus Plus!
Vista’s search box which resides in the Start Menu is very useful when you need to locate something quickly; it’s hard to imagine that it could have been improved upon, but the Start++ utility certainly has. Start++ makes things easier by allowing users to create shortcuts and aliases; for example, suppose you’re surfing a site and need to Google the fictional word “arrakis”, the desert planet in Frank Herbert’s novel Dune; pull up the search box from the Start Menu and type “g arrakis”. Start++ will intervene, displaying a Google result list for your convenience.
Another cool feature is the search startlets. For example, type in “play Beethoven” and Start++ will spring into action, scouring your hard drive for music files with the Beethoven in the name, building a playlist with all found results, all inside Windows media player.
Beautify Your Shortcuts
The Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover doesn’t pretend to be anymore than a utility that alters your shortcuts, an amazingly simple utility. Windows Vista’s shortcuts can be particularly annoying to look at: the large Vista icons coupled with the ugly arrow vignette can be an annoyance. The Shortcut Overlay Removing can shrink or remove these arrows completely. Once installed, specify your shortcuts options, log off then back in, and your shortcuts will look greatly improved. If you’re tired of the ugly arrows that come attached to Vista’s icons, give this utility a test drive.
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