Computer Customizing Guide Blog

In the age of flash drives, USB flash drives, external hard drives, and much more, it can be difficult for the average user to choose another storage option. On one hand you want something that holds a lot of information, but on the other you want something that is portable and secure.

The main two contenders for external storage are flash disks, and external hard drives.  A flash disk stores your information on a memory card that is made of liquid and metal, and has no moving parts. An external hard drive is basically your standard hard drive, but enclosed in a case and is connected via a USB port.

The advantage to flash disks is that they are very small, lightweight and can hold enough information to store a bunch of documents, pictures and more. The disadvantage to flash disks is that the data being stored can become corrupted over time without use, they cannot store huge amounts of information yet like a hard drive can, and they really are not that secure unless you go out of your way to make it secure.

Now the advantages to external hard drives is that fact that they can store large amounts of information, can be very secure, and are almost just as portable as a flash drive. Obviously the disadvantages are that external hard drives are not nearly as small as a flash drive, and they consume more power then a flash drive ever could. Also, since hard drives have moving parts, the chances of it breaking are greater.

Out of these two options though, there is one more that really does blow both of them out of the water, and that is storing your data online. Using an online storage company like XDrive, you can access your data (with a password of course) anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection.

In a world where the internet has been stretched to about every area, this solution makes sense and is much more convenient. The only disadvantage that I can think for online storage is the fact that if you do not have an internet connection available, then you cannot access your data.

Something very few people know is that they don’t have to pay for virus, spy ware or ad ware protection. Online there are many different companies that provide protection software that is completely free of charge, but is actually ranked higher and more secure then paid for software like Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee.

The real problem people have with using free software is that everyone thinks it will be harder to use, but the opposite is true. For example, the best virus protection for free online, according to Download.com, is AVG anti virus.

AVG does not only have rock solid protection though, they also include an automatic updater and scanner so all the busy work is done when you are not using your computer, perhaps the most important time to have protection.

On top of those tools is the fact that there is no confusing gibberish or hundreds of pop-up windows alerting you of new viruses. AVG just has a simple box that pop-ups and alerts that you are infected, and asks whether you want to delete the virus or quarantine it.

Choose what you want done, and that is all, you can go back to surfing the internet or whatever else you were doing. You can download the free version of AVG at free.grisoft.com and try it out for your self. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed, as I have not been for the past two years I have used it.

On January 30th of 2007, PC world declared the floppy disk dead. Before that though, most new computers came without a floppy drive anyways. I myself have recently gotten rid of my floppy disk drive, but then found myself needing its sweet plastic-y goodness again.

What could I possibly need the floppy disk drive for? Well that fact of the matter is, for almost a decade the floppy disk has aided computer builders, companies and hobbyist alike, in setting up the Operating System like Windows on a brand new, blank hard drive.

Now of course the floppy disk drive stopped being a requirement long ago for installing a Operating System on a new hard drive, but since I used it for so long, it was really the only way I knew how to do it.

So then what are the alternatives? Well the only 2 other ways I could think of doing it was one, creating a boot disk like I used on the floppy disk, on a plain CD disk. Since the CD/DVD drive is basically here to stay, it is a pretty safe assumption that every computer will have one, so it is a perfect replacement for the floppy disk drive.

The next option I had, which also worked out fine, was to use a flash memory card as my disk storage. In case you don’t know, a flash storage card is that same type of memory that is in your digital camera, and is very small. It usually hooks up through a device connected to a USB port, or built directly into your computer.

Well anyways, since it stores data I simply made it a boot able flash disk with all the same tools that were on my floppy disk, which allowed me to install the operating system. To make it boot from the flash drive, I just opened up the BIOS on startup (hold/press the Delete or F2 key on the first opening splash screen), and change the default boot device to USB or to the built in flash drive. This will make it read the boot able flash disk on the next startup, and boot from it.

These are of course vague descriptions on how to do this, but the fact of the matter is there are to many different types of Operating Systems and boot disk programs to really just give you step by step instructions, because most likely it will not be the same for you.

Also I figure if you are able to install an operating system on a new hard drive anyway, then you are able to get them to work for you anyways.

Whatever your situation is though, my methods will still work if you apply your certain conditions to them.

Like most people on the internet, I have more then 20 accounts on 20 different websites. Having these many accounts are easy at first since Internet Explorer and FireFox store login names and passwords. But later on down the road, whether you get a new computer or you erase everything on your current hard rive, those login and passwords that are stored will be gone.

This leaves a problem that most users think can only be solved by writing down every user name and password they ever create. That doesn’t need to be done though if you have a simple computer program called KeePass.

KeePass makes you only remember one master password, and within that account you can easily store all of you other account information, for an unlimited number of accounts. This means you only have to remember one password, and not even a login or anything else.

KeePass truly does make my life, along with many others, much more easier, and the best part about it is that you can download it for free.

In fact I have tried other password keeper programs that only cost a mere ten dollars, and it still wasn’t nearly as easy or secure as KeePass.

Recently I had a big problem with my computer’s hard drive having sector errors, which in turn caused a lot of ordinary errors to show up.  Since I could still use my computer though, I was fooled into thinking it was a virus or another form of data corruption, which led to many wasted hours of misdiagnosing.

If you ever have the same problem, you should be aware of what exactly a hard drive sector error is and what the warning signs are.  So to start this lesson we will first talk about the fundamentals of a hard drive.

A hard drive is what stores all of your computers information, from the Operating System to a picture you might have taken on vacation. What happens is a circular magnetic piece of film is attached to a metal platter, and it spins it with a reading arm over head. The reading arm has a sensor on the end of it, which can read that magnetic piece of film by just being over it.

This is how the information gets stored, binary code in the form of ones and zeros are applied to the magnetic film and the arm reads and writes to it. This is what leads to the sector error problem, and is why you really have no choice but to get a new hard drive when this happens.

When the sectors that the hard drive breaks down into, which these days is hundreds of thousands or more,  get damaged they can no longer be read by the arm and have no choice but to not be used anymore. This means at first your problem will be small, but over time as more and more sectors become unusable, specific data on them will be corrupted and you would not be able to store any more on that sector. 

This slowly dwindles down your memory amount while at the same time destroying data. So like I tell everybody, you should always back up your data at least once a month, because you never know when this will happen. If you do backup your data, and this happens, all you have to do is buy and install a new hard drive, and then put your data on the new one.

One problem I see from a lot of people is that their computer is working fine, and then it just shuts off. This can be extremely frustrating since nothing seems wrong with your Operating System, so what could it be? Well most likely it is because your computer is overheating.

Built into just about every computer that exists in the world, is a digital thermometer that monitor’s the internal temperature of the power supply and the CPU. If that temperature gets to a dangerous level, your computer will the just shut off right away, without asking you as a safety precaution so fires don’t start.

Obviously they are just trying to protect consumers, but it can get annoying when the temperature in your home or business rises because of the season, and starts making your computer turn off. To stop this though, or at least stop it the best that you can, is to help your computer breathe better.

One way to do this is to move your computer farther away from the wall and other objects around it, so air can circulate easily. Another way is to clean out the dust in your computer regularly, because if it builds up it too prevents air circulation and makes it hotter inside.

Of course if none of that works and it just will not stop overheating, you can always buy and install much more powerful fans on the CPU, or a better power supply with a more powerful fan. The Power Supply and the CPU are really the only two things that get hot inside of your computer, so those are the 2 main parts you need to worry about.

Also, just an interesting piece of information, you can have your computer setup to have liquid nitrogen running through tubes, throughout the entire computer. This is an extremely efficient way to cool your computer, but can be expensive and very tedious to maintain.

I get countless numbers of emails from people who just can’t get the Windows Desktop to show up on their monitor. I hear complaints of “it comes on at first, then the screen just goes black” all the way to “my desktop is only showing the color gray for everything.”

The fact of the matter is, these are common problems and most video/graphic display problems can be fixed if the user just knew a little extra important information.

The first thing every computer user should know about their computers display properties is that most computers have a video card built into it’s main circuit board. This means any additional video/graphic cards you install, or that came with it, are the secondary display device.

This causes a problem because the computer tends to want to display the default display device at first, leaving you with a black screen because your monitor is plugged into the other display device port. This can be changed one of two ways, through Windows or your computers BIOS setup screen, or by physically moving a jumper on your computers motherboard.

Your computers motherboard is the big main circuit board inside your computer, and a jumper is a little tab like piece of plastic that connects two pins together. If this is the way your computer makes you enable the video/graphics card, then the jumper will be located somewhere on your motherboard. Somewhere might be a broad term, but motherboards come in many different shapes, sizes, brands and varieties, so I can not be certain where your’s would be located.

Note: If you cannot find it with your eyes, read your motherboard or computers manual to see where it is.

The next piece of important information, and really the last piece you need to know, is how to adjust your display properties. From Windows 95 and up Microsoft has always made it easy to adjust these properties by just right clicking anywhere on your desktop, and then click “Properties”.

The Properties box will open, and you will see several sections that allow you to adjust various things, like the appearance, resolution, monitor set up, color scheme, wallpaper, screen saver and much more.

Knowledge of these two factors will greatly help you in diagnosing and fixing about 90% of the display problems you have, and the other 10% of problems are usually caused because your video/graphics card has gone bad and you just need a new one.

A simple way to speed up the loading time of your applications, games, etc, is to run a disk defragmenter program. What this does is organize your data together because it gets spread out on your hard drive over time.

By grouping it back together, your hard drive doesn’t have much further to reach when it is loading the data, plus it has to work less so it increases your hard drives life span.

So, to defragment in Windows XP, just click your “Start” button on the task bar, go to “Programs”, then “Accessories” and then finally “System Tools”. In the System Tools folder there is a program called “Disk Defragmenter”. Just open the program and run it over night, because it tends to take a long time. The next morning just reboot and you will immediately notice the speed difference.

If you are using Windows Vista, I read that you can schedule disk defragmentation’s monthly with the scheduler so it will do it automatically overnight, once a month for you.

When it comes to getting rid of spam, there are really only two options that will work wonders, and the rest just slightly stop spam from coming in. The first option, and best in my opinion, is to use Gmail, Google’s free email service.

When Google made GMAIL, they purchased the best spam filtering software available, and let me tell you that it worked. Unfortunately the software they purchased is only viable for large companies, but Google made it so everyone could have it through their service. So what makes it so special? Well I don’t really know the inner workings, but let me say that I never receive any spam in my GMAIL account. This of course doesn’t mean that one won’t occasionaly slip through, but still, that is pretty good for me who receives more then a thousand spam emails a day.

The next option is to use the Thunderbird email program, which is similar to Outlook, but much easier to use in my opinion. The reason though that this is a great second option, is becasue of it adaptive spam filter built in, that over time reads all of the emails that you mark as junk, and over time you will receive less and less of it.

Out of the two options though, GMAIL is your best bet, but of course you can’t always use a Google email address so sometimes you need a great program like Thunderbird. It all depends on your situation.